Catholic Junior College 2012

Ng Hao Yuan, 1T12 Insights & Reflections

2012 Task 1: Adaptation of the knee pad (498 words)

CJ052

Our project, Safer for me, focuses on reducing the number of injuries sustained by the
elderly community from falls with the use of a knee pad. We have learnt the importance and
the fragility of the knee in the human being. It has also enabled us to better understand the
factors affecting the severity and prevalence of such falls.
The strengths of our project includes the padded protection it offers to users and the amount
of injuries it could reduce in the elderly community. The project would also raise awareness
for the importance of taking care our fragile knees whilst promoting our product. However,
we have failed to account that there would be limitations when trying to produce such a
product. For example, there are difficulties in gathering the materials to produce a prototype.
Furthermore, assembly is hard without the availability of professional machinery in our
access.
During the course of our project, some references were made to companies such as
Assissted living. We could approach them to request for help and funding for the production
of the prototype. This would help in long term funding for our project which could possibly
maintain the long term success of such a product.
Another alternative is to approach National Youth Council and apply for a Young
ChangeMaker initiative, the Young ChangeMaker Grant of SGD$3000 to fund the project.
This would help in producing the knee pad which would otherwise be unaffordable by our
group. However, this would be a short term funding for our project and may limit the success
in reaching the majority of the targeted elderly community.
Presently, our group plans to publicise through social medias such as Facebook and
Youtube. However, with the grant or the funding, we could also advertise our project with
brochures, possibly placed around respective local clinical and pharmaceutical stores or
nursing homes so that our targeted community, the elderly, could be better exposed to our
product and on ways to prevent falls.
Considering the fact that publicising of our product and awareness may not be able to reach
the entire elderly community, our group could possibly donate or sell the knee pads to local
physiotherapy centres or knee rehabilitation to help those who needs it more currently. This
method could also possibly blossom awareness in the elderly community if introduced into
such centres.
Lastly, under the circumstance that a funding and grant is not achieved, we could also
upload our invention online as a free open source for people to download the design of the
knee pad and details pertaining to the knee pad so that they could manufacture the knee pad
themselves. This would still be able to reach out to a small part of the elderly community if
produced elsewhere as the design would be focused for the use by the elderly group. This
method is adapted from Linus Torvarlds whom is famous for creating the free open source
operating software for computers, Linux according to an online article (n.d).

Catholic Junior College 2012

Reference
Torvalds, Linus - The Free Information Society. (n.d.). The Free Information Society Educating and Entertaining since 2003. Retrieved from
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/article.php?id=99