Shawn Lim

Contents

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About Project Orion 3Goals of Project Orion 4This Year in Orion 5Projects 6

Nest Excavation 7Boat Painting 8Banana Chip Making 9Kindergarten Painting 10SK Saujana English Programme 11Toilet Construction 12World Sea Turtle Day road show 13Mangrove Replanting 14Beach Clean-Up 15

Reflections 16

About Project Orion

Project Orion - Rovering With Turtles

is a series of service learning projects in collaboration with World Wide Fund for Nature – Malaysia and the Singapore Scout Association.

Project Orion was held in Setiu, Terengganu, Malaysia. With 9 participating scouts

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Goals of Project Orion

Create awareness on the importance of Wildlife Conservation among the participants and Scouting community in Singapore

Provide opportunities to Youths to increase their self and global awareness based on the Service Learning Methodology and Scout Method

Provide a platform for Youths to be trained to be future leaders in similar projects

Impart the values of service learning to Youths

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This Year In Orion

18Days Service Learning

9Participating Scouts

300+Nests Excavated

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Nest Excavation

Nests are excavated about a week after that nest has begunhatching. The eggs are usually buried under 1 meter of sand. Nestsare excavated to check on the condition of the eggs to count howmany have successfully hatched, and how many were not able tohatch. For research purposes, the eggs that did not hatch are openedup to see if they did not hatch because it was unfertilized or it haddevelopment issues.

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Boat PaintingAs Kampung Mangkuk is situated near the coast, one of the villager’s source of income would was from fishing; because of this constant usage, the boats was especially susceptible to wear. A fresh coat of paint also prevents water from entering the tiny cracks in the wood preventing further wear and tear.

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Banana Chip Making

It starts off with unripen green bananas as the ripen oneswould be too soft to process. The bananas would first beskinned and soaked in water it will next be sliced into thinslices to be ready for deep frying however before frying, theslices would be quickly soaked in a mixture of starch, sugar,and salt to season the chips. It is then fried for about aminute.

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Kindergarten Mural Painting

We were tasked to paint a mural at a local kindergarten the mural had to be simple and yet have in impactful meaning. We decided on two tortoises with the tagline “Our Home, Our Effort” 10

SK Saujana English Programme

The team was invited to SK Saujana to hold an English programme cum interaction session for their student.

We first had a short reading session

Followed by a math game where they have to come up with a denomination based on their assigned values And musical chairs

Plus a surprise wedding invitation!

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Toilet Construction

The team was tasked to build a toilet in the mangrove area located on the outskirts of Kampung Mangkuk. The toilet had a simple mechanism there was no water pumps or sewage system so waste simply lead to a septic tank.

The site for the toilet Marking out the septic tank

Loading the tube The skeleton of the toilet

Building of the walls

The completed toilet12

World Sea Turtle Day Road Show

The World Sea Turtle Day road show was jointly organized by WWF-MY and the Malaysian Government in an effort to promote awareness for sea turtle conservation.

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Mangrove ReplantingWe had a mangrove replanting with some of the local schools in an effort to educate the young on the importance of mangrove conservation.

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Beach Clean-UpAs a post expedition project, the team held a beach clean-up event for local cub scout units; with a focus on education, we also had a brief sharing session to the units.

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After months of planning, Project Orion V is finally happening! In the morning of 14th June, we gathered at Changi Airport Terminal 1 to do the final logistics checks and to check-in. We boarded a 45 minutes flight to Sultan Mahmud Airport, Kuala Terengganu we then chartered a taxi to Kampung Mangkuk. We arrived at Kakta’s (our host) house around 45 minutes later we had our first meal there. We then headed to the pink house to settle down and unpack our logistics the pink house was a prominent building in the village as it served as the PEWANIS Headquarters; also the building’s exterior was entirely painted pink. After settling down, we headed for a walk towards the beach where we had our first glimpse of the turtle hatchery. With temperatures around the 35⁰C, we decided to take a dip into the clear blue ocean. We then headed back to Kakta’s house for dinner and at night we sat down with the staff from WWF-Malaysia to plan out our schedule for the next few days.

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We started the off with a visit to Sekolah Mangkuk to meet the headmistress to discuss on the details of some of the activities that we were having with the school at a later point of the project.

After that we had our first nest excavation at the turtle hatchery. We had 3 nests to excavate totalling to around 200 eggs this was the first time that we performed such a task and it was intriguing but at the same time slightly intimidating as we had to account for all the eggs in the nest. We were told to dig till about out arm’s length and begin to slowly nudge around for the turtle eggs as the egg shell we delicate, we could not pull the shells out immediately when we say them but had to slowly nudge the sand around the egg away. We then had to reconstruct the shell and lay them out neatly for data collection, for eggs that did not hatch, we has to open them up to fund out the reason that they were not able to hatch some were underdeveloped meaning the eggs did not manage to develop fully into a baby turtle. The other possibility was that the eggs was not fertilized and an embryo did not form. All the data collected was recorded down by the staff for analytical and research purposes.

We had our lunch and then proceed for our afternoon activity we had to split into 2 groups in order to be more efficient one group went to the kindergarten to paint a mural on the walls, the others went to the jetty to paint the boats. As Kampung Mangkuk is situated near the coast, one of the villager’s source of income would was from tfishing; because of this constant usage, the boats was especially susceptible to wear. We managed to paint 2 out of the 3 boats on the first day.

At night we had a banana chip making session with the villagers where they taught us to make banana chips. It starts off with unripen green bananas as the ripen ones would be too soft to process. The bananas would first be skinned and soaked in water it will next be sliced into thin slices to be ready for deep frying however before frying, the slices would be quickly soaked in a mixture of starch, sugar, and salt to season the chips. It is then fried for about a minute. 18

It was quite a slow paced day as we did not have a lot of things that was needed to be completed. One of the challenges faced that day was thinking of a suitable message for the kindergarten mural. We did not want the message to sound too elitist and also we needed to consider the children’s English competency as they might not understand higher order words. According to our project advisor, they may not easily comprehend the meaning of words like “conservation”. We finally decided on a simple but powerful message of “Our Home; Our Effort”. After the painting and dinner, we went back to the Pink House to have an early rest as we had to get up early for an English program with SK Saujana students.

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We started off earlier than usual as we had to reach SK Saujana by 7:30am. We had breakfast with the principal of the school and several school staffs, after that we began our English program by starting with the reading of some children story books. Next we played a simple mathematical game that required them to form “change” based on the number given. For example, boys would be assigned to be 5 cents while girls would be assigned to be 10 cents and they have to group themselves to form the amount required. We had a short break and played musical chairs with the students they were very enthusiastic in participating in the games. We had a small closing ceremony and bid goodbye to the students. Back at the canteen, we were surprised with a wedding ceremony that was held in the school itself. For some of us it was the first time that we saw a traditional Malay wedding.

After such an eventful morning we headed back to the kampong to start on our next project, building a toilet. We had to dig a hole for the septic tank to be fitted in the hold had to be of specific height in order for the toilet to function properly. The toilet is an example on how the kampong is able to self-sustain waste the excrements would decompose and leech into the soil to be used as the plant’s fertilizer.

At night we had some night activities with the kids from the kampong we taught them how to make a dragonfly using paracord and also some Basic English. However we had some difficulties communicating with the kids as they did not really understand English while we did not understand Malay.

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The previous night was my turn for night patrolling with Ray, sadly we did not manage to see any turtle nesting as we were told that this year’s nesting count had decreased dramatically for some unknown reason. We did manage to see some old nesting tracks from earlier in the week.

We continued to build the toilet, after loading the concrete tube into the hole that we had dug the previous day; to out horror the hole was not deep enough so we had to slowly dig around the concrete tube to let it sink in to the correct depth. We managed to get the tube to the correct depth to before lunch. After lunch we started on the walls of the toilet mixing the cement was one of the highlight of the day back in Singapore we did not really get the chance to do it. At the end of the day, we managed to get about half the walls of the side up.

At night our hosts came over to the pink house to teach us how to make a traditional Malay kite called a Wau. It is made very simple materials such as bamboo sticks, colored wax papers, and treads.

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In the morning we had our second nest excavation, this time we had a lot more nests to excavate so we took a nest each. A single nest has about 92 eggs!

We continued to build the walls of the toilet in the afternoon. By the end of the day, we had almost completed the whole toilet we were just left with the plastering of the walls.

At night we helped to paint the banner for the World Sea Turtle Day road show.

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In the morning we had a games session with the village of KampungMangkuk. They had their own unique twist on some games such as bowling with coconuts. Others tested our household skills such as coconut shaving and needle treading. They also used flour to mark out the game area as it was bio-degradable.

After the games session, we took a bus to the hostel to start on preparation works for the World Sea Turtle Day road show. We set up the exhibition booth and tried out the mascot costumes. We had an early night as we had to get up early the next day.

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The World Sea Turtle Day spans over two day and is a traveling road show through Terengganu and is jointly organised by the Malaysian government and WWF-MY. It aims to educate the public on the importance of sea turtle conservation.

We mainly mended the booth and distributed postcards with that message. Some of us also mended the “selfie” booth. Through this road show, I learnt a lot about turtles in the two days.

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Today we added the finishing touches to toilet, such as the plastering of the wall and some touch up. For the plastering, the locals did help a lot as for many of us, we didn’t have and experience and ended up creating quite a mess before getting the hang of plastering the wall.

In the evening, we initially planned to go fire fly seeing, but due to the impending weather, we had to postpone the event.

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In the morning we had mangrove replanting with some school from that area. The children was very excited to jump into the water and plant the mangroves. The event also serve to educate them on the importance of mangrove conservation.

In the late afternoon, we got a chance to fly the waus that we made a few days before. Only one kite managed to fly, but it flew a bit too well and the string snapped, the kite disappeared into the horizon.

That night the weather was a lot better than the other day so we had our firefly watching. We managed to see quite a lot of them and for some of us, it was the first time that we had seen such a sight!

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It was our last day in Terengganu in the morning, we arrived back from our R&R in Renang. We continued attempting to fly our wausfor the rest of the day.

At night, we had a culture night to celebrate one of the most important aspects of Malay culture, food. The chicken was especially marinated by the villagers.

That night we said our goodbyes to the villagers and also thank them for their hospitality. We also said our goodbyes to Atika as she was leaving the PEWANIS.

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