This morning we visited SDN1 ElementarySchool in Labuan Bajo to share our new knowledge about the marine life of Komodo National Park and the importance of looking after our environment. Our team split in two — Rafid with Retno took one class while Amelia and I took another. Between us we taught 48 fifth grade students today!
We began by showing a video about Labuan Bajo and the marine life of Komodo National Park. We asked them to note all the marine species they could identify in the video. We wanted to know how much they already knew about the environments on their doorstep. They were so enthusiastic to tell us about the coral reefs, fish and especially manta rays, one of the tourism icons of Komodo National Park.
Next we told a story about “Mona the Manta and Friends”. This story tells about the journey of Mona, and the time she met a turtle who had become trapped because of trash. After the story we asked them to write what their thoughts about the morale of the story. They wrote things like “we must keep the ocean clean, so marine life can survive”, and ” clean oceans are rich oceans”. We finished by singing a song “Jangan Buang Sampah Sembarangan” or ” Don’t throw your trash in the wrong place” and encouraged them to keep their school environment clean and to be responsible with their trash.
Sharing environmental awareness with elementary students
Today I learned that if we are to deliver key messages to people, then we must present those messages in a good and attractive way We must also be aware of our audience’s mood to receive our messages, to ensure they enjoy to receive our knowledge. It was a great experience to share our knowledge with the students, and I hope they will remember and implement so our ideas. Change starts from little things, and these students are the future of Labuan Bajo.
In the afternoon, we met with Abam Sianipar from Conservation International, who led a session about marine life conservation using technology. I learned about acoustic tagging, satellite tagging, and DNA sampling to monitor marine life, and the work that CI is doing to research manta ray populations. I can’t wait to collaborate with Abam during our manta safari tomorrow!
