May Day Dugong Ambassadors Outreach at Chek Jawa

On Labour Day (1 May 2008), I joined the homeschooling community and a group of staff from Intel at Chek Jawa. The event was the brainchild of Joseph Lai and held in conjunction with the International Year of the Reef 2008.

The event was a full day of activities from a guided walk by us volunteers (from NSS and Naked Hermit Crabs), followed by mural painting, beach cleanup and an outreach exercise from the dugong ambassadors!


Children painting mural! You can see the mural at the Chek Jawa Visitor Center at House Number 1.

After guiding in the morning, I helped out with the seagrass station by the dugong ambassador from Team Seagrass, Siti! The Dugong Ambassadors are made up from the Intel group, the homeschooling group and some of us volunteer guides. We are supposed to share with the public who visit Chek Jawa about Dugongs. At my station, We were joined by a young friend from the homeschooling community who was more enthusiastic than us! I am full of admiration for him as he did not know anything before joining us and after we went off to check out some cool GPS gadget, Tin took over the whole station by himself! *Bravo!* I wish all youths of today are like him :)


Our industrious and enthusiastic young dugong ambassador, Tin at work.

I had a whole lot of fun on that day. It was not my first time working with this group of children and I enjoy every single experience with them. While we were at the seagrass station, a reporter from Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB) approached us and asked me and Siti a few questions. Yesterday (11 May 2008), my mom called me up and informed me that my photo and quote appeared in LHZB! The article was the center-spread of the LHZB equivalent of the ST Life! Section. You can see the article below. Unfortunately it is in Mandarin Chinese. Perhaps some kind soul with some time on their hands can help to translate this.


Excerpt on Naked Hermit Crab and me.


The full article. Click for full size.

More photos from the event can be seen here.

Related Articles:
"Shore extravaganza: Dugong Ambassadors at Chek Jawa", Wildfilms, 1 May 2008