Meet Guide Sereena: How Singapore's Ageing Platform Is Turning a Retired Civil Servant Into a Lifeline for Housebound Seniors

Retirement didn't slow Sereena down. She had already been volunteering with Lions Befrienders, a well-known Singapore charity, by supporting its mission“to provide friendship and care for seniors to age in place with community participation, enabling them to enjoy meaningful and enriching lives”.   It was during one of the varied programmes, that she learnt to use the MemoryLane app. Like journaling, seniors use the MemoryLane app to write their life story, with the help of AI. Subsequently, the individual journal would be printed into a book that each senior could keep, a record of their happy memories, with any photos they could find also captured in the book.  After her branch ran a second round of the MemoryLane app, she came into contact with Ash. It was Ash who invited her to be part of GetSetUp encouraging her to share her interests and passions as a Guide.

‍Why Singapore Needs More Guides Like Sereena as the Population Ages

Singapore is widely recognised as one of the fastest-ageing societies in the world, a trend that is reshaping demand for both paid work and volunteer support among older residents. 

Against that backdrop, GetSetUp positions itself as an ageing platform in the fullest sense, not just a place to take a class, but a bridge between retirees who still have expertise and energy to give, and older adults who need connection, movement, and support to stay independent at home.

Sereena's journey from a career in the civil service to volunteering, and then to teaching on GetSetUp, is a live example of what that bridge looks like in practice.

Volunteering as a Pathway to Purpose: Sereena's Work With Lions Befrienders

Sereena's connection to movement and well-being goes back around 20 years, starting with martial arts.

While she was in school, "I initially wanted to be a Girl Guide," she recalls, which turned into becoming a land ranger and running campfires.  As these campfires were usually held in the evenings on weekends, her late mother wanted her to learn a martial art as a form of self defence, in case the need arises. She went on to earn a black belt. Subsequently, after she started working, a colleague introduced her to free Qigong and Tai Chi classes. 

"It was the right time to do something," she says. 

More recently, she attended Qigong lessons through the Lions Befrienders curated exercises for seniors, ahead of stepping into a teaching role of her own.

When Sereena saw how oversubscribed the local Qigong sessions were, more than 30 people wanting a place, with only limited space and programme capacity available she designed a structure to make the class work online: thirty minutes of Qigong followed by strength and balance exercises, with seated variations offered for those who needed them.  Sessions are held once or twice a week.

But the exercise, she learned, was never really the point. 

"It's the community and making connections," she says.

Reaching Singapore's Housebound Seniors: Why Social Connection Matters as Much as the Exercise

Part of Sereena's role as a senior volunteer with Lions Befriender involves door-to-door engagement, knocking on doors, checking in, and having conversations with residents in her area. Through those visits, she began to notice something the wider programme needed to hear: a significant number of seniors were housebound for reasons that had nothing to do with being in a wheelchair. 

She flagged this to staff, and it became one of the openings that led her to GetSetUp, a role that reaches people who couldn't easily get to an in-person class at all.

GetSetUp has also taught her patience. She recalls a grandmother who wanted to join an online session but was delayed as she had to attend to a crying baby. She was caring for her grandson, only a few months old, and simply couldn't be fully present. Another participant had to fit her session around doing laundry, with the washing machine going full steam in the kitchen!

"How it impacted me: I needed to be patient," Sereena says plainly.

Classes, she realised, have to bend around real lives and back-to-back responsibilities, not the other way round.

From Civil Service to Community Teaching: What "Workforce Opportunities in Later Life" Looks Like for Sereena

Sereena's path to becoming a guide had its challenges.  An opportunity came through Ash, who encouraged her not to give up so easily. 

"I learned to keep trying for something I wanted to do, even if the first time doesn’t arrive, and that’s specifically what led me to GetSetUp," she says.

Looking back, she's able to see it from the staff's side too - fully packed schedules, limited space, bookings committed in advance - meant she would have to wait for available slots. She found ways to share what she knew informally, online, with a small group of seniors, while she waited for her own opportunity.

Money, she's candid, isn't really what drives her. 

"At this stage in life, I can manage with my retirement funds," she says. "If GetSetUp pays me, it's nice, [but] I don't insist on it; some people need it more than me." 

If she is paid, she has a plan for it already: she bakes low-sugar muffins as a hobby and gives them away, and would use any earnings to keep sharing them with others.

Staying Curious: New Languages, New Skills, and still "21++ at Heart"

Sereena's next goal is to pick up another language because she sees language learning as a strategy against dementia. She's also looking to perhaps add to her classes and teach dress alterations as she has some background in dress-making.

She recently completed a two-day GetSetUp workshop on how to teach seniors, which she describes as genuinely eye-opening. 

"There are certain things that people need to know about teaching others," she says, including the need for extra patience and skills specific to working with seniors, some of whom are older than she is. A friend once told her to simply "act" her age; Sereena describes herself as "21++ at heart," but says that teaching and connecting with seniors demands even more energy and patience than that.

To keep her own mind and body empowered, she swims regularly and keeps attending the Qigong and other exercise classes run by Lions Befrienders, then translates what she learns into her own sessions on GetSetUp, deliberately choosing the easier techniques to share first.

Being Hospitable: Curating Classes for Real Lives, Not Ideal Ones

Sereena describes hospitality as one of the biggest lessons GetSetUp has taught her, not just sharing knowledge, but curating it. That means making a class easy to follow, adding steps gradually, and reminding participants explicitly that it's fine to slow down, if something is too difficult. 

"Oftentimes it is easier to be impatient and [wonder] why people are slow," she admits, until you put yourself in their shoes. Seeing someone doing laundry mid-session, or caring for a grandchild, is a reminder that everyone is managing something. 

"Everyone really wants to join, and I was so happy to be able to help them," she says.

Empowering Singapore's Seniors to Get Online

GetSetUp's promise of connection only works if people can actually log on, and Sereena has seen first-hand how big a barrier that can be. Some seniors aren't confident with technology and rely on family members to help them get started. In one case, she visited a family in person and spoke directly to the son, helping get his mother logged into a session before he left for work.

That experience opened her eyes to something wider: a cohort of older women in Singapore who received less formal education, (in one case, a senior lady did not receive any formal education at all. Her late father decided only sons could go to school while daughters stayed at home to help cook and clean) are unable to use mobile phones. Without support, they simply can't take part. 

Sereena's approach is to reassure them that they can use technology and still learn it and practice on GetSetUp. With a little help from a family member, and by actively encouraging sons and daughters to teach their mothers rather than do everything for them. 

"The first thing is the fear," she says, and while she's happy to call and to help herself, many still prefer to turn to their own children first. For Sereena, supporting and encouraging this group of women isn't a side note to her volunteering; it's central to what empowerment on an ageing platform actually looks like.

A Team Behind the Guide

Sereena is quick to credit the people who helped her get here. 

"I would like to give a shout-out to the whole GetSetUp team," she says, "for they are the ones who supported me to go through all the sessions and to give me the confidence I needed to teach." 

She's candid that some people assume they already know everything, but she is open to learning and wants to make sure she genuinely does a good job. She's grateful for the behind-the-scenes technical support people often forget about. 

She remembers Ash helping her set up Chrome Book before her first session, and calling ahead to make sure she was ready before he arrived.

 "It's the little things," she says, "that GetSetUp helps with."

An ageing platform like GetSetUp can add significantly to a market like Singapore, where the population is ageing quickly and where volunteering, flexible work, and simple human connection often matter as much to older residents as any single class. Sereena is building a second chapter defined less by retirement and more by reaching the housebound, the hesitant, and the overlooked, and bringing them into a community that was, until recently, hard for them to access at all, where she’s sharing Qigong and strength-and-balance classes on GetSetUp.