LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences
LO 6 Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance
This Saturday was very exciting for me, since I took part in Family Festival 2018. I didn’t take part in last year’s Family Festival and perhaps that’s why I was so amazed by all the liveness of this event. The plaza was crowded with tents that offered various activities. Upstairs, the GC stalls were also quite nicely arranged. This produced a very positive first impression on me and added to my enthusiasm to contribute to this event.
The Rainforest Restoration stall at plaza had a variety of plants that we grow in the tree nursery, and by seeing the volume of our involvement, I was fully ready to take on the responsibilities I had. Ms.Mireille explained the process of a game I had to play with the children or parents that approached the RRP stall, which had the purpose of introducing the different species we were growing as a part of our service. We hoped that, even with an exposure so little, we could spread awareness about the Singaporean plant species and the goals our service pursues. My time slot was limited to one hour, since I also had to help supervise the game stall for The Island Foundation GC, therefore I wanted to make full use of the time I had.
However, in the first half an hour, we weren’t approached by that many people, as I had expected, and to be honest, this had quite a frustrating effect on me. Fortunately, in the second half hour, I finally had an opportunity to interact with a few middle-school students for the “RRP species game” activity. First, I explained what they had to do, in order to identify each species. While speaking I tried to be as coherent and succinct as possible, so that I wouldn’t lose their attention and concentration. In my opinion, I accomplished this task quite well, since the students seemed to be interested in the processes they had to go through.
My next step was to supervise them through the game, and help out if they had any problems. The game was quite straightforward because all the categories of leaves and other plant characteristics were printed on paper, and the students just had to check off each category, before concluding what plant they thought it was. From my point of view, the middle-school students enjoyed this process and also enjoyed the sense of accomplishment after correctly identifying all the species. I did my best to encourage them along the way and also congratulated them for their correct answers.
The way I understood it, my job was to make the process entertaining for them so that they could understand the purpose of our Service and also become a little more knowledgeable about the environment around them. I was proud of achieving my task and shared my experience with Feven, who would have to go through the same process of explaining and supervising the “RRP species game”. In addition, being the Communications representative for the Service I took a couple of pictures in order to make sure that this event and our achievements can be recorded properly.
Overall, even though my involvement in the RRP section of the event was relatively short, I gained experience and a practical understanding of how to communicate with middle-school-aged students, in a way that would be entertaining and engaging for them. This communication method is crucial to spreading even a small portion of awareness about the Rainforest Restoration Service and the Singaporean and Global environment in general. I am glad that, once again, I managed to contribute to this tremendously important goal.
