Sharing Information About Mangrove Conservation

By Li Dandan – Hongkong

Today I was assigned to join the Mangrove Project with Pippin and will go to the Mangrove plant with senior high school SMA Santa Maria Surabaya students tomorrow. We gave a presentation of the mangrove including what is mangrove, the importance of protecting them, how to plant mangrove and so forth. In addition, in order to improve the awareness of students and encourage them to know more knowledge, we played a game during the presentation.

The game is interesting and meaningful. First of all, we separate students into three groups, shrimp, fish and crocodile. The crocodile can eat fishes and fishes can eat shrimps. Students who play as shrimps or fishes need to sit down after being touched. Therefore, it is very fast that all the students play as shrimps or fishes sit down very soon. Then we told the ‘crocodiles’ that they are dead because of no food.

Second time, some students play as mangroves and stand in the corner. The ‘shrimps’ and ‘fishes’ can relive after touching the mangroves. Then we can see everything is alive. Therefore, students can have a better understanding of the importance of mangroves.

It is my first time that I know that I know Indonesia has the most mangroves among all countries. School education really plays a very crucial role in teaching students knowledge of environmental protection and experience can enable students to get firsthand knowledge. We plan to go the mangrove planting area with students tomorrow to plant some mangroves and clear some garbage. It is really cool since it is very hard to have the opportunities to contact mangroves, especially in China.

The students will also do a project by groups tomorrow. After they finish their observation, they will do the survey using questionnaire and will ask the workers in mangrove planting some questions. Moreover, they will give a presentation of their findings on Wednesday. It is challenging and meaningful. Especially, their awareness of environmental protection can be further raised after this activity.