Hello Philippines!!

By Lysanne Snijders

While I am writing this I am very tired, bruised and my muscles hurt very badly! But do not be alarmed. This is not the results of the environmental project in which I am participating but the consequence of a first time mountain climb in the Philippines. That was great by the way!

I arrived in the Philippines one month ago to participate as a volunteer for the South Sea Exclusive Foundation environmental school program. At the moment, I am finishing my Master Biology at the Wageningen University so my relation to nature and the environment is rather clear. During my studies, I participated in a number of courses related to environmental and nature communication. As I love studying and observing nature, I also love to conserve it! But most of all, I just love telling other people about how wonderful and fascinating nature is and that therefore we should respect it!

In total, I will stay on Palawan for 3 months. Not only my feelings towards the importance of environmental education have lead me here, but also the sustainable approach of the Foundation which I greatly support and of course Palawan itself that really caught my interest. As a biologist, I could not miss out on seeing ‘the last ecological frontier’. How green and beautiful this island is I could really see from the top of the mountain this weekend. So, all the more reason to protect it.

This specific week started by taking the kids every day to Pandan Island in Honda Bay. Each day we took another class usually ranging between 30 and 40 kids. Helped by the Philippine Coast Guards, Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary, the teachers and the volunteers, we are every day with quite a number. At Pandan Island we show the children the corals, anemones and we even let them find Nemo! Also we take them for a “mangrove waste cleaning tour” in which we show them the mangroves, tell them a very nice story about the consequences of plastics and glass for animals in the mangroves and do a bit of cleaning ourselves. Practice what you preach as they say.

How fun this can be, it is also very intensive. Especially if you use the weekends to do some site seeing, snorkelling and mountain climbing. Luckily there are also places I can go to relax, like the town of Sabang where I can spend my days on the beach. Or just going into town for a nice ice coffee and reading a book. Yes, live is hard work in the tropics.

The living circumstances are a bit different than what I am used to in the Netherlands. As to be expected. Here I wash my clothes myself by hand. At least, I am still trying to. I guess for clothes to be categorized as washed they actually have to turn out cleaner than as they started. However, I think I am making progress. And, I also have a lot of roommates here, the kind that usually walk on more than 2 legs. It is all part of the total experience package. And as a biologist I am usually just sitting there observing them instead of trying to kill them or running away screaming.

One of the nicest things of joining a project without knowing the people and in a continent you have never visited is meeting new people and making many friends. I really enjoy working and spending free time with Kyra and Sander, but also with the Philippine volunteers that give the lectures for the project. It is very interesting to see what the differences are in culture and especially opportunities between students here compared to the western world. We are so lucky, especially in the Netherlands, to be able to study our Bachelor and Master when we want to and still have money to go to the other side of the world!

There are still a lot of culture differences I still have to get used to and accept. Good ones (karaoke!) and bad ones (the ‘take what you can get’ attitude and always being treated like you are a celebrity, and yes that is a bad habit!). However, I am sure that in the next 2 months I will learn even more than I did so far and maybe I will also be able to adjust my western way of thinking a bit. Although I had to spend some amount of money to get here, I will leave richer than I came.

Lysanne (on the left) with one group of kids on their way to Pandan Island

Arriving on Pandan island

Garbage the children collected from the mangroves

The children just enjoyed the snorkeling

Coast guards on duty

All about Dugongs

By Kyra Hoevenaars

On the second day of the program, the volunteers teach the children about coral reefs and about impressive and important animals that live in the coastal waters of Palawan. We start the day with a lecture about large sea animals, like sea turtles, octopus, sharks, sea birds, dolphins and dugongs (sea cows). With illustrations, the volunteers explain the children the difference between dugongs and manatee, which are relatives of each other. They use sandpaper to let the children know what a skin of a shark feels like. During a quiz about these animals, the children are asked how many species of sea turtles live in the Philippines, what a dugong eats and how large a whale shark can be. Most children already know from the book we gave them that a whale shark can get as large as two buses, that a dugong eats sea grass and that a mud crab has 10 legs. During the sea animal bingo the children have to cross the different animal off their bingo card. There is a price for the lucky one that has a full line first ad the main price for the kid who finishes his whole card first of the class.

After lunch, there is a lecture on coral reefs. In this lesson, we want to show children the importance of coral reefs. Coral reefs are part of a complex ecosystem with a large number of animals and plants. It provides food and shelter to a greater variety of living organisms than most other natural areas in the world.

We end the day with watching the movie Finding Nemo on a big screen, which takes the children into the underwater world of two clownfish, a father and his son Nemo. When Nemo gets lost, his father travels the whole ocean to find his son and meets many interesting but also scary creatures on his way. There are a lot of species and situations in the movie that the children now recognize.

On the third day of the program, the children will go and see the coral reef for real, we will take them to go snorkeling on a small island in Honda Bay. They will also go on a tour through the mangroves to view what they have learned on day one.

Volunteer Esther during the lecture.

Who will win the sea animal bingo?

Watching Finding Nemo

Pupils from other classes trying to get a peak of the movie.

Playing a game during the break.

Teaching about the sea

From our newsletter of June 2010:

By Honey Rose, volunteer in the Environmental Education Program

It was a week or two after my graduation as an environmental sciences major, when a friend told us about South Sea Exclusive and that they were looking for volunteers. After a couple of meet ups with Kuya (Filipino for older brother) Sander, we were able to meet the other volunteers who happen to go to the same school we graduated from. We also learned more about the South Sea Exclusive Foundation as well as the Environmental Education Project that we were going to conduct by the materials given to us beforehand.

During the initial meetings, we still had no idea what it would be like to teach the pupils. All we know is that this will be a completely new learning experience for us as much as the pupils that we will be teaching.

Among the preparations done was the ‘dry-run’ where we were able to share comments and suggestions on how to make the lecture better and effective. The following day, each team (I am paired with Phobis, a education major) was asked to sit-in and observe the class that each will be handling for us to familiarize with the students as well as the classroom environment. It was the first time that we met the students and we were really happy because they were very nice and polite. Teacher Mila was also very nice and accommodating, which made things a lot easier for us. As our team was beginning to understand what we were supposed to do, our nervousness and excitement was increasing as the days draw near to the first day of the project.

The first day was about mangroves and the lecture turned out to be a lot of fun both for us volunteers and the kids. We handed them booklets with information, games and pictures of the different themes we will cover in the project, and we noticed instantly that they were excited to read and answer the exercises in it. The children were eager to listen and participate. Their eagerness and excitement was even more intensified when we started to play the mangrove game. The children undoubtedly had lots of fun because some of them did not want to stop playing even if it was already time for lunch. These positive reactions made us volunteers look forward to the following classes even more.

It is a great feeling to know that we were able to help but surprisingly we realize that this experience also helped us in many ways. We volunteers are truly grateful for the privilege of working with really dedicated people. Special thanks to Kuya Sander and Ate (Filipino for older sister) Kyra as well as the other people we met throughout the project.