One of the biggest events on service’s calenders is the campus Family Festival. It is essentially a school fair with rides, second-hand goods shops, and food. A lot of these goods and services are provided by the service groups, with additional stalls set up for raising awareness.
The Rainforest Restoration Project service took part in the Fest with a stall wherein we gave out longans. We then taught people how to plant them into polybags and then plant them in their own gardens. Because most people don’t have gardens, we also advertised the tree planting campaign on-campus, wherein people can pay a fee to plant their own sapling here, and watch it grow. So, although we didn’t sell anything, we were part of the action.
We also just did general awareness-raising and teaching people about trees through showing them some of our saplings (a lineup of mostly trees of the hopea genus).
Hence, we had to do a lot of hurried prep work during that week’s session. This was mostly around preparing a speech about what we do and why (i.e. why do endangered trees matter anyway?), organizing a tree identification game, and learning how to teach visitors how to raise their longans. The main learning point was in organizing charts by which visitors could classify the traits of the trees. Hence, I learned a lot more about hopea trees that day and heard more about their histories.
The categories into which we sort the leaves of our trees. This chart is filled out with the information about Diospyros oblonga.
For example, Hopea oderata. It can grow up to 40 meters, and is known for its thick, very straight trunk. Hence it has been harvested to the point that it is now vulnerable.
Our H. oderata (second tree from left). It is probably going to get planted soon.
My favourite tree so far, however, is Hopea ferrea. It is incredibly handsome, with neat acuminate leaves crowned with the rusty red of the new growth. However, overexploitation of its wood and resin has gotten it classified as endangered.
Hopea ferrea (left)
On the day of the festival, I had signed up for 10:00 to 10:30 to shift, but I stayed until 10:50 as I was engrossed in helping to set up the stall and make last-minute changes.