I had the wonderful opportunity to spend 3 days (11 – 13 November 2011) with secondary one to four (age 13 to 16 years old) school students from the Convent School, Taiping, Perak. This group of students comprised members of their own School’s Nature Club. The objectives of the programme were to instill empathy towards other living things surrounding our environment, to increase environmental awareness and to increase understanding on the richness of Malaysian biodiversity, particularly bats. There were 80 girls accompanied by 8 teachers who participated in this programme, which was packed with intensive, interactive and exciting activities. The students were engaged in many team-building activities such as creating the team’s logo, motto, and cheer. My role in this programme was to facilitate them in teamwork activities such as the role play activity ‘Saving Batu Cave’. This game aims to enable participants to get a feel for a real bat conservation situation from different view points. The students took on up eight different roles such as The moderator, Government Officials, Directors of the Mining Company, Directors of the Tourism Development Corporation, Community group A – former employees of the mining company, Community group B – activists campaigning against the mines, Community group C – Hindu religious and community leaders and Bat scientists and conservationists. Prior to that, I spent a couple of hours telling the students about the biodiversity and conservation of bats in Malaysia. With some basic knowledge on the bats the students put up some good presentations during the role play as well as scored high marks in bat math quizzes. Their understanding of bats was elevated when we went for an outing to the Bat Cave nearby. Students were excited getting first-hand experience with over a thousand of the durian pollinator, Eonycteris spelaea in the cave. Students also feasted on the various leaflet, comics and posters on the bats in Malaysia. This programme was considered very successful because the teachers were interested to continue this programme in future.

Julie is a member of the SEABCRU student support team, and the materials she used for this workshop are freely available for download

We have been reorganizing the website a little, and now have a resources section which includes materials for outreach and education. I have begun by uploading materials developed by the Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit, and will be adding in others over the coming weeks. If you have materials, please share them! And if you use materials, it would be great if you let us know how they were used. This is intended to be a cooperative venture.  There is also an Outreach group in the SEABCRU social network -- join us via JomSocial tab here on the front page.

The 1st annual heART Youth Camp was hosted by Congressman Art Yap on the campus of Bohol Island State University - Bilar from June 25-26th, 2011.  The purpose of the camp was to inspire Boholano youth ages 15 to 30 to pursue their career passions by broadening their knowledge bases.  The weekend activities included presentations covering a vast range of topics, including Philippine biodiversity.  Related to this topic, Kendra gave a presentation entitled “Biodiversity and Conservation of an Uncharismatic Fauna…..Bats!” that over 100 students attended.  Basic information provided to the students included: what is a bat, what bats eat, where bats live, general bat classification, diversity of Philippine bat species, threats to bats, and how to conserve bats through outreach and research activities.  At the end of the presentation methods for capturing bats were demonstrated including mist nets and hand nets as well as how to use an echolocation detector.

Four of the students that attended Kendra’s presentation are now working on their senior thesis in conjunction with her dissertation research on Bohol, including a student who is studying population ecology of a common cave bat species (Hipposideros diadema). To date these students have participated in surveying bat populations roosting in 4 caves on the island, from which they have learned how to capture and properly handle bats, take standard morphological measurements, and identify species of cave bats.