Design Challenge
#1: How might we keep our communities in Singapore safe and healthy during the global COVID-19 pandemic?
Project Description
HUSH+anywhere (HA) is a digital space of silence, where our participants take time to pause and reflect, breathe to regulate your emotions, and build care and empathy for themselves and others, to foster social cohesion as well as personal and professional resilience.
Led by our Deaf Partners and co-facilitated by *PIRs, we meet via video conferencing, and take the participants through our trademark 4 Zones of Hush: Intention, Silence, Expression, Sharing. The 45-60 minute session can be themed to further meet our clients’ specific needs and objectives.
*PIRs – Person-in-Recovery with Mental Health Issues
Criteria #1: Value
HA was conceptualised with the intention to help members of society acknowledge and process their emotions during the COVID-19 outbreak. Following this introductory session, participant feedback is gathered and analysed, and a programme consisting of multiple sessions for sustainability is developed to cater to the needs of each organisation and/or community session, to help them cultivate psychological resilience during COVID-19 and beyond.
Criteria #2: Inspiration
HA is unique because of our human-centric approach and raw design. We turn any space into one where you can immerse yourself comfortably in silence. Stepping into our Deaf Partners’ shoes allows you to experience their perspectives, and understand their lives, building empathy and encouraging actions that promote inclusion in a diverse professional and/or personal environment.
As these attributes surfaces strongly, it becomes the bridge that reconnects you to yourself and others. Your perspective will widen, leading to deepened care and compassion for yourself and others, in turn teaching you to create a safe environment and to build psychological resilience.
Criteria #3: Impact
Based on our internal survey analysis, HA has proven to increase awareness in difficult emotions and feelings of connectedness, with 70% of participants expressing the desire to attend future sessions. Some of our participants struggle to adjust to the changes amidst the pandemic while juggling other responsibilities at home. HA sessions have provided them with a space where they can find quiet respite and support, while they acknowledge and process their difficult emotions to cultivate resilience to survive the now and the future.
Criteria #4: Timeliness
HA was piloted in March, and we have been expanding to various workplaces, communities and healthcare institutions to date. We will also be offering our sessions to schools in May. In the next few months, we aim to further enhance and value-add HA by implementing ways for auto-tracking and measurement of progress and impact, in order to ensure a fast and efficient analysis of our data to better serve our clients. We aim to reach more people with these tools in order to mitigate the rise of mental health issues throughout and after the pandemic.
Criteria #5: Systems Thinking
With the COVID-19 situation in Singapore growing direr, mental health experts have stressed that there will be a rise of mental health issues that will worse in this pandemic (Straits Times, 5 April 2020). There are various individual and community initiatives put in place to support the community to take care of their mental health, and we are doing our part through supporting people in need, such as healthcare and migrant workers, by providing them with our Self Care Kits as a physical support. HA comes in as a supplementary experience to ensure long term sustainability.
