I had the wonderful opportunity to spend 3 days (11 – 13 November 2011) with secondary one to four (age 13 to 16 years old) school students from the Convent School, Taiping, Perak. This group of students comprised members of their own School’s Nature Club. The objectives of the programme were to instill empathy towards other living things surrounding our environment, to increase environmental awareness and to increase understanding on the richness of Malaysian biodiversity, particularly bats. There were 80 girls accompanied by 8 teachers who participated in this programme, which was packed with intensive, interactive and exciting activities. The students were engaged in many team-building activities such as creating the team’s logo, motto, and cheer. My role in this programme was to facilitate them in teamwork activities such as the role play activity ‘Saving Batu Cave’. This game aims to enable participants to get a feel for a real bat conservation situation from different view points. The students took on up eight different roles such as The moderator, Government Officials, Directors of the Mining Company, Directors of the Tourism Development Corporation, Community group A – former employees of the mining company, Community group B – activists campaigning against the mines, Community group C – Hindu religious and community leaders and Bat scientists and conservationists. Prior to that, I spent a couple of hours telling the students about the biodiversity and conservation of bats in Malaysia. With some basic knowledge on the bats the students put up some good presentations during the role play as well as scored high marks in bat math quizzes. Their understanding of bats was elevated when we went for an outing to the Bat Cave nearby. Students were excited getting first-hand experience with over a thousand of the durian pollinator, Eonycteris spelaea in the cave. Students also feasted on the various leaflet, comics and posters on the bats in Malaysia. This programme was considered very successful because the teachers were interested to continue this programme in future.
Julie is a member of the SEABCRU student support team, and the materials she used for this workshop are freely available for download
Julie walking students through the bat math
