UWC rides the Green Wave

On Monday this week, the 40 Trees for 40 Years college service in UWCSEA, in a collaboration with us, successfully planted a tree kindly given to us by National Parks in their Green Wave initiative. This project is done with all of the schools island wide and hopes to educate young students about the importance of biodiversity while also serving to increase the diversity of trees across Singapore. 

We planted a Garcinia atroviridis also known as the Asam Gelugur, a critically endangered species found native to Southeast Asia. The Asam Gelugur has a wide variety of ethnobotanical uses such as its fruits being used as a sour relish. Another use is that the leaves of the tree have medicinal properties and are used by women who have undergone childbirth. In terms of the location of the planting, we have continued to populate the forest area with trees including this one. The conditions of the soil were worse than the usual planting sites due to the large percentage of builders rubble there however the Gelugur is quite versatile so it should be fine.

40 Trees For 40 Years finishing up the planting

We would like to thank 40 Trees for collaborating with us and providing the bulk of the manpower. We would also like to thank NParks for donating the tree. We hope to work with both of them more in the future. 

Improving literacy through biodiversity education

Over the past couple of weeks, our outreach team have been working on tree-related activities aimed at children around the age of eight. We collaborated with the South Central Family Service Centre and their Grade 11 Reading Buddies (local service) to bring a fun and exiting activity for local school children. Their service is helping children on a literacy program become more fluent in English and we took this opportunity to educate local school children about Southeast Asian biodiversity.

To target this audience better, we created a book focused on five tree species that are local to Southeast Asia: Durian (Durio sp), Saga (Adenanthera pavonia), Moringa (Moringa oleiferia), Chengal Pasir (Hopea odorata), and Aquilaria (Aquilaria sinensis). In addition to this, we also created a fill in the blanks activity that was combined with interaction with trees physically present. An important point raised in the planning of these activities was that there should be as much engagement with the children as possible. We planned to deliver on this by having the fill in the blanks activity such that you'd pick up the word, place it, and after finishing a sentence, identify that specific tree by going up and pointing to it.

The kids enjoyed the fill in the blanks activity

The kids really enjoyed learning about the different species in the book and it was great to see them be so focused in completing the activity. It was also good for us to make the Grade 11 students more aware about these trees as well.

We're always looking to expand our outreach further, if you are interested in working with us, please contact us at: rainforestnursery@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg