Raffles Community Leaders Forum

You(th) Matter

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Giving a short 10 minutes talk at the Raffles Community Leaders Forum along with Howard Shaw (SEC) and Wilson Ang (ECO) tomorrow at RI(JC). The organizers have invited me to just share a bit about what I do which was a tad vague. Since the talk is meant for youths wanting to make a difference, I thought I'll throw in some free lessons I picked up from 6 years of trial and error. Hopefully it'll help them get a nice firm head start. But at the end of the day, this is just a sharing of ideas and experiences.

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Upcoming seminars by ISEAS

There are two upcoming seminars at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies that may be of interest to some of you. The first is for those of you interested in the impact of climate change on food production. The second is more immediate to home - a tour and seminar on the marina barrage.

1) Rice in Southeast Asia: What Future with Climate Change?
Speaker: Duncan I. Macintosh, Development Director, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
Date: Monday 27 April 2009
Time: 2:30 TO 4:00 PM
Venue: ISEAS Seminar Room 2
Free Seminar, First Come First Served.
Organised by the Environment and Climate Change Programme, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Seminar Flyer: http://www.iseas.edu.sg/iframes/27apr09a.pdf
RSVP Response Form: http://www.iseas.edu.sg/iframes/form27apr09a.htm
Contact Person: Ms May Wong, may@iseas.edu.sg

2) The Marina Barrage: Seminar and Tour
Date: Wednesday 29 April 2009
Time: 3:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Venue: Marina Barrage
Organised by PUB; the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; the Singapore-Delft Water Alliance, National University of Singapore.
Mr Yap Kheng Guan, Director, 3P Network, PUB, Singapore's Water Management Strategy and the Marina Barrage
Seminar:
"Appreciating Science Behind Water Quality of Marina Lake"
Professor Vladan Babovic, Director, Singapore-Delft Water Alliance, National University of Singapore
Free Seminar; First Come, First Served
Seminar Flyer: http://www.iseas.edu.sg/iframes/29apr09a.pdf
RSVP Response Form: http://www.iseas.edu.sg/iframes/form29apr09a.htm
Contact Person: Ms May Wong, may@iseas.edu.sg

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Giving a Guest Lecture on Environmental Groups

I have been invited to give a guest lecture in the GE3239 Environmental Sustainability class in NUS Geography Department on "Community Groups and Environmental Leadership". The lecturers would like me to share my personal experiences and so for the first half, I share my own journey. Along the way, I introduce to the students the various environmental leaders I met along the way. As I have to rush off for an interview, the second half will be presented by one of the lecturers. The latter half will be an overview of all the interest, types and actions of the groups in Singapore. This may be of interest to some as it provides a brief introduction to the community.

Encountering Environmentalism

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There is a mistake on the date of the lecture. Oops!

Environmental NGOs, Civil Society, Volunteer Groups and Local Action

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I'm somewhat hesitant in putting these slides online and sharing it on the blog originally as I felt that this is not totally comprehensive. However, I do not profess to know it all! Far from it. Always hoping to learn more. If I missed out anything or made any mistake, please feel free to leave a comment!

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Facebook and Beyond

On Day 3 of the National Sustainability Conference, I will be involved in the youth declaration as well as giving a short 10 minute presentation on environmental "cyber-advocacy" in Singapore. I've included the synopsis and slides here for those of you who will not be there on the day. Enjoy! Comments are most welcome. I do not profess to be entirely comprehensive. It's more a sharing of my own experience. I'm hardly an expert on the subject and there are definitely better ways to do this. Feel free to share your own experiences!

Facebook And Beyond: Environmental Cyber-Advocacy in Singapore

View more presentations from November Tan. (tags: nscsingapore facebook)

ABSTRACT
The popularization of the Internet has changed the face and form of environmental outreach and activism in Singapore. The compression of time and space has led to fast dissemination of information and the rapid rallying of grassroot support became increasingly effortless. In the last 5 years, with the rise of popular social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, etc., it has further changed the dimension of environmental activism. Social media tools such as blogs and wikis allow for user-generated content which allow greater dissemination of information, reaching out to people who may otherwise not have the opportunity to do so. The current challenge is now to come up with more creative ways of using the social media platform, to maximize its network and potential. Just as traditional media practitioners have tried to come up with the latest attention grabbing ad campaign, social media practitioners are constantly thinking of ways to creatively and effectively reach out to a greater network, to gather support, fund raise, encourage action or simply to spread the word. This presentation hopes to highlight some of the environmental social media projects that have been done in Singapore and some of the lessons learnt through the process.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
November Tan is a research scholar in the NUS Department of Geography as well as an active nature volunteer with various volunteer groups. She is the author of the Midnight Monkey Monitor blog (http://leafmonkey.blogspot.com) which was listed as Blogger’s Blog of Note in 2007. A self-confessed social media addict, she spends her off days testing new social media platforms and cooking up new projects. She currently coordinates workshops for nature volunteers under the initiative known as The Leafmonkey Workshop.

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National Sustainability Conference

The National University of Singapore (NUS) would be organizing the National Sustainability Conference on the 20-22 February 2009 which would be held in the NUS Kent Ridge Guild House.

This conference will discuss critical global sustainability crises in the Singaporean context and our response to these challenges. This conference would also achieve to be the first net zero carbon emissions conference in Singapore. The end-product of this conference would be a Singapore Youth Declaration on Sustainable Development.

In addition to chairing one of the subcommittees in the Youth Declaration, this leafmonkey will also be speaking on 22 Feb, the 3rd day of the conference. The topic will be on "Facebook and Beyond: Environmental Cyber-Advocacy in Singapore".

Around 250 renowned experts, academicians, administrations, business, civil society and youths are expected to participate in this 3-day conference.

Some of the highlights of our conference would be:

Copenhagen Global Deal on Climate Change, What it Means for Singapore
Ambassador Chew Tai Soo, Chief Negotiator on Climate Change for Singapore

The Promise of Technological Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Mr Lee Tzu Yang, Chairman, Shell Companies in Singapore

Singapore's Coastal Vulnerability to Climate Change Impacts
Associate Professor Wong Poh Poh, Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS, and Coordinating Lead Author in IPCC Fourth Assessment Report

National Identity, Sustainability and Nature
Dr Geh Min, Past President, Nature Society, and winner of prestigious inaugural President's Award for Environment 2006

To register, please visit: http://www.nscsingapore.com/registration.html. Currently there are limited seats left, so please register soon to reserve your tickets.

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Sharing session with science teachers

Living together with Nature

view presentation (tags: biomimicry food environment nature)

About a month or so ago, a very nice rep from the publishers Marshall Cavendish contacted the leafmonkey via this blog. They asked if I would talk to a group of science teachers about how science is applicable in our daily lives. The publisher gave me a list of science textbook content that I may be able to apply to my presentation since my talk is suppose to correspond and complement the syllabus. The talk's objective is to help science teachers, give them ideas on how to make class more interesting. I think. The talk before mine is by a forensic pathologist! How cool. I've been overdosing myself on CSI in Cameron since one of the only channels we get is AXN.

Anywho, I got ideas from various friends (mainly Ria, thanks! the whole first section is courtesy of Ria's creative juices) and finally decided to try to do everything - as greedy as I usually am.

I organized my talk in 3 parts - learning about nature (using interesting analogies from daily lives), learning from nature (how we can find nature in daily life - ripped from the talk I give the biomimicry class) and finally, living together with nature. The last part is so huge but I've decided to talk about how our daily life affects the environment and specifically, a debut of my freshly experienced research data. Seeing as how I just arrived back from the field highlands less than 12 hours ago, this is really fresh off the oven.

Right after finishing my slides a few minutes ago, I suddenly got gripped with fear. After all, these are science teachers that I will be speaking with. What more, there will be ONE HUNDRED (100) of them! *gulp* I will be talking about biological functions when I've never ever taken biology (except for a general biology module) and last time I studied science was at 16! I will be sure to disclaim in the beginning that what I speak is from field experience, from guiding... and of course, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. We're all about sharing and exchanging right?

Having said that, do share and comment on my slides. Let me know what you think and if you can think of more interesting analogies, do share. If you're wondering at the lack of text from the 3rd section of my talk, it's because no time to really flesh it out. I've included it in the notes but I doubt slideshare allows people to access that. Sorry, download not available. Apologies and thanks to the people (and animal friends) whose photos I rippedused.

And yes, I recycled slide template. ack. Meanwhile, I shall try to make an attempt to take photos and blog my experience after the talk. Hopefully I'm not too smashed by the end of the day from lack of sleep!

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TICE Eco Camp and May Day Dugong Ambassador

Monkey has been busy. Despite having to grade papers, complete my independent study module essay, organize a end of semester grad party and coordinating a million things, I found time to give a talk at the TICE Eco Camp last Saturday, 10 May 2008.

It was a busy day for me. I finished the slides at 5am, arrive at the presentation at 9.30am, finished the talk at 11am, walked to the National Youth Environment Forum at 11.30am, left at 2.15pm for the talk on History of Singapore at National Museum of Singapore then back to NYEF at 4.30pm for the round up. Finally rounded the day with a nice wholesome dinner at Food for Thought, my absolute favourite restaurant for now. Nothing beats supporting a social enterprise.

On Sunday, mother surprised me with a sighting of this rambling leafmonkey on Lianhe Zaobao. Apparently the news article of the May Day Dugong Ambassador outreach at Chek Jawa finally came out!


Excerpt on Naked Hermit Crab and me.


The full article. Click for full size.

Well today has been full of surprises. When I went to interview somebody for the religion project today, turned out that the person attended the TICE eco camp and I realized that I forgot to talk more about the groups I am involved in (NHC and Toddycats). Ah well, we had a nice chat about that. In fact I saw many familiar faces at the talk - Gaytri from NHC and Yi Han from SAVE. I heard many SAVE members were there that day. Hope I managed to actually share some new ideas with everybody. I know how tiring it is to hear the same thing all the time.

A few hours ago, I returned home to find several comments on my blog from participants who attended my talk. Thank you all so much for the encouraging comments! I really appreciate it. One of the participants blogged about the camp and was very insightful. That is something we all need to be - being critical. Do ask me any question you want and give me any and all brutal feedback to help me improve. Thank you!

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Greening our lives

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Giving a talk at the TICE eco camp later today and just finished the slides! It's been a hectic week but I'm glad I completed all my work. I'm no good to anyone if I can't finish my work.

The theme of the camp is recycling but I thought I'll offer a more holistic overview to recycling and "greening" out lifestyles in general. It sounds cliche to be talking about the 3Rs but I guess it has certain value in it. At least for beginners, it's a start!

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Upcoming Events

27 January 2007 (Saturday)
Time: 3-4pm
Venue: Woodlands Regional Library

"Our Priceless Southern Shores"
Uniquely Singapore, our city reefs are just minutes from the central business district but teem with clownfishes (Nemos), seahorses, octopuses and of course lots of brilliant living corals. Some of the islands are still cloaked in forests that harbour rare plants and cling to magnificent natural cliffs and rock features. The Southern Islands are also rich in history, with a role in Singapore's founding, mysterious temples and shrines and intriguing sea legends. These islands are a peaceful haven for those who still want to see the stars, breathe the sea air and enjoy serenity away from the urban rush.

Ria Tan shares 600 photos and lots of stories of our Southern Islands. Come find out more about these magical islands, that belong to all of us and our children. And what you can do for them. For a sneak preview, see City Reefs
http://www.wildsingapore.com/places/cityreefs7.htm




28 January 2007 (Sunday)
Time: 9am to 12noon
The two venues are:
1) Gek Poh Ville CC
2) Hong Kah North CC (main event)

"Hong Kah North Recycling Day"

There will be an exhibition and recycling demonstrations among other activities.

Most importantly, this recycling day is part of the Southwest CDC's Ecocommunity initiative which allows residents of Southwest CDC to bring in their recyclables in exchange for food coupons! (See image above).

This sunday, you can bring in your recyclables to any of the community centers listed here and collect a coupon which you can then proceed to redeem at the Hong Kah North CC near Bukit Gombak MRT.

The NUS Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research Toddycats has been invited down to set up a booth to introduce biodiversity/ marine litter issue to the heartlanders. Monkey will be there to do a song and dance while pedalling the wares. Buttons, magnets, tshirts, bukit timah nature reserve guidesheets, etc will be on sale.

If you live in the area, do come down and check out the event. You might even learn something or find some activities you can get involved with :)

Related Reads
RMBR News, 15 Jan 07
"Can 'food for trash' project be extended?" Straits Times forum, 24 Jan 07
"Residents in Hong Kah take part in RecycleXchange programme", CNA, 21 Jan 07

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The top ten things we need to know about asian tropical forests

Richard Corlett, PhD
Professor
Department of Ecology & Biodiversity
The University of Hong Kong
China

Wed 10 January 2007, 4.00 PM
DBS Conference Room
Block S3 Level 5

The forests of tropical Asia support 20-25% of global terrestrial biodiversity, but are now being rapidly cleared for commercial agriculture, while most forest areas that remain are degraded by uncontrolled logging. The protected area system is inadequate, even on paper, and legal protection has often done little to deter hunting and other forms of exploitation. This regional crisis is well documented, but the response so far has been insufficient and piecemeal. The problems are social and political in origin, but Science has an essential role to play in planning, prioritizing and implementing solutions. Ecological understanding is going to be particularly important in the long-term management of small protected areas and in the restoration of degraded habitats. Unfortunately, most ecological research in South East Asia has focused on a narrow range of largely academic problems, with the result that we understand neither how intact forest communities function nor how they are changed by human impacts. This seminar will give a brief introduction to ten gaps in our current knowledge and suggest how these gaps can be filled.

Presented by: Professor Peter Ng

I can't wait to meet, or at least see Corlett in the flesh! Wow wow wow! I've read so many of his papers and books. This is another one of my groupie moments.

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