‘Close to Man. Closer to Extinction’ with Roots & Shoots Youth United (RSYU)

A campaign to save the Banded Leaf Monkey

The banded leaf monkey subspecies native to Singapore may just be the nation's best kept secret -- so well kept in fact that many are unaware of its critically endangered status. Fewer than 40 of these banded leaf monkey subspecies left in Singapore’s Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

A group of seven students from the Roots & Shoots Youth United (RSYU) chapter in the National University of Singapore (NUS) embarked on reaching out to the youth community in NUS to garner support for the conservation of Singapore’s banded leaf monkey subspecies and other primates.

The “Close to Man. Closer to Extinction.” campaign is the first primate conservation campaign in Singapore to focus on the plight of Singapore’s critically endangered banded leaf monkey subspecies.

RSYU ventured out to the world of cyberspace to reach out to Singapore’s youth on a platform which they enjoy and are familiar with.

By leveraging on the power of social media, the campaign actively involved these youths in spreading the message of conservation. The group’s Facebook group has clinched over 400 ‘Likes’ while its Twitter account has over 100 followers in just 10 weeks.

The group also held a special event on March 15 in NUS. It had an educational exhibition on the banded leaf monkey subspecies and highlighted the legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall and her commitment to sustainable living.

The campaign also managed to raise over SG$1,500 for the Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore) from the NUS community and corporate sponsors like NatSteel Holdings Pte. Ltd.

The event also showcased the Monkey Business project from the Roots & Shoots chapter from Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary).

Sensory Trail Walks with SAVE

The Singapore American School’s SAVE (Students Against Violation of the Environment) Club regularly escorts visually handicapped Singaporeans along the Sensory Trail, a nature walk on Pulau Ubin, specifically conceived to give visually impaired people the chance to experience nature. Developed in 1995 and formally adopted by SAVE and SAVH (the Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped) in 2000, the philosophy behind the Sensory Trail is that:

“if you intimately know and understand nature, you will have a stake in preserving it.  If you understand that even just off the coast of Singapore exists a diverse and complex ecosystem, you might think twice about throwing your empty soda can off the jetty.

−Daniel Hartman, SAS Student

Protecting the environment aside, the Sensory Trail is also based on the belief that visual handicap does not and should not limit someone’s capacity to appreciate all that nature has to offer. By providing signs in brail and sighted guides, the visually handicapped are alerted to the sounds of local birds and to the smells of lemon grass, pandan and durian.

“Plenty of animals don’t rely on vision to understand and live in their environment. By focusing on the non-visual aspects of nature, you notice things that you didn’t before.”

−Lars Crawford, SAS Student & SAVE Officer

You can read more about the Sensory Trail by clicking here

OMG: Not Just “One More Green” Campaign

Students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have started OMG

(One More Green campaign) in an effort to raise the campus’ recycling rate to match Singapore’s. The team decided to act when they realised the disparity between NUS’s recycling rate and the nation’s rate. At 12%, NUS’s recycling rate in 2008 was less than a quarter of the national rate of 56%.

Graduate student Goh Tong Jee, OMG's project director, said the NUS community can do better.

        

“It is appalling that Singapore’s leading institution of higher education is recycling at a rate so much lower than the national average. We have to do something about it.”

−Goh Tong Jee, NUS graduate student & OMG Project Director

The team is also trying to use this as an opportunity to tackle another problem in Singapore: the landfill problem. According to the National Environment Agency, Singapore’s only landfill, located at Pulau Semakau, will be filled by 2040, given current recycling rates. To extend the landfill's lifespan by five years, Singapore would need to get recycling rates up to 70%. In leading by example and fixing the shortfall they've seen in their immediate community, the NUS OMG team plans to lead efforts to increase the national rate. 

OMG hopes to inspire NUS students and staff to ‘just recycle already.’

You can click here to read about the OMG campaign in more detail.

Biodiversity Immersion at St John’s Island and Labrador Park

Not many of us know much about Singapore's flourishing biodiversity, even though 2010 is the UN International Year of Biodiversity. Last year, students from the Bedok View Life Sciences Club, through Roots & Shoots Singapore, visited St. John's Island to find out about the marine life. By planning the trip during low-tide, our community leaders learned about the various species of plants and animals and how they adapt to their surroundings.

Raffles Girls' School's Monkey Business Team

The RGS Monkey Business team have been promoting understanding of one of Singapore’s native species, the Long-Tailed Macaques, since 2008. Their goal is to achieve a cohesive and harmonious environment for both people and the macaques. The Monkey Business team recognises the critical need for the public to first be helped to understand the monkeys through a targeted education campaign, in order for them to learn to respect and coexist with the monkeys. Monkey Business have already conducted educational outreach campaigns at seminars and conferences, through newsletters and school-based sharing, and even on-site by speaking to individual visitors at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Lower and Upper Pierce Reservoir, and residents living in these areas. They have also recruited and trained a group of student volunteers to do the outreach together with them, thereby ensuring the sustainability of the project. Seemingly tireless in their endeavours to help the monkeys and wonderfully ambitious in their outreach, they also brought their project to Melbourne University in October 2008, and to Michigan University via video-telecast in June 2009, when they represented Singapore in the Community Problem Solving (CmPS) programme.

Ci Yuan plans trip to Canada in May 2010

Ci Yuan community group are planning a cultural exchange trip to Toronto this May to learn about other groups’ projects and share ideas.

"Over the past year and a half, our group has dealt with community issues ranging from environmental sustainability and biodiversity conservation, to health and community engagement, and has reached out to many with our community-based projects. We know that there are countless other initiatives

that can be adopted to benefit our local community, and we are keen to tackle some of these in the near future.

We hope that our trip to Canada this May will provide refreshing insights into how we can better engage our local community. We also hope to learn more about the Toronto Roots & Shoots group's projects. By meeting them and perhaps even participating in a joint project, we hope we might adapt their initiatives to our local community and perhaps our experiences could give them ideas for their future projects too.

We young people are all working towards a common goal to make a difference to the world we live in. Sharing information and experiences in this way is a win-win situation for Roots and Shoots groups around the globe.

We are very much looking forward to this trip, and to collaborating on a global scale to make a positive difference."