Happy World Wildlife Day!
The World Wildlife Day (WWD) Regional Youth Symposium 2024, organised by youths under the NParks Youth Stewards for Nature programme, was held on 24 and 25 February. Aimed to connect and empower youths from the region in the conservation scene, this was the third installation of this regional event held in Singapore. It was the first time the event was held in a publicly accessible location, One Punggol. The Bird Society of Singapore was invited to be part of the event in a new segment featuring prominent youth-led conservation projects from across Southeast Asia. Along with 14 other youth-led groups from the region, we prepared posters and a booth to share our work and research with event attendees and members of the public. A stamp rally activity was also organised such that participants that engaged in a simple activity at all booths (ours included) would be able to redeem a sticker, culminating in a prize from the WWD organising team.
Thank you to the WWD organising team for inviting us to the event, and to the speakers, NParks and Mandai Nature management for visiting our poster. We would also like to extend our appreciation to all of you who dropped by our booth! We had a lot of fun talking about our work and the birds in Singapore, and hope that you enjoyed listening to us nerding out. To those of you who went through our “ritual” to receive our stickers, we hope that you’ll grow to love the Asian Koel rather than to see them as a nuisance 😉 We would also like to extend our massive gratitude to Tan Yenyi from the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum for the collaboration and lending us the bird specimens, without which our booth would not have been as successful.
See you all at our next outreach event and to all our new friends from the region, do feel free to get in touch with us to exchange ideas! If you would like to catch up with us in the meantime, feel free to check out our feature in the Zine prepared by the WWD Youth Showcase team below or at this link. Till next time!
BirdSoc members (L to R) Emma, Zachary and Chen Xi sharing about our work to (R to L) NParks CEO, Ms Yu-Ning Hwang, Mandai Nature CEO, Dr. Sonja Luz, and the Punggol Coast MP, Dr. Janil Puthucheary. Photo: Adrian Silas Tay
BirdSoc member Zachary sharing more about our species pages with speakers from across Southeast Asia. Photo: Adrian Silas Tay
(L) BirdSoc member Kaeden sharing about our work with participants; (R) Bird specimens on display at our booth – thank you Yenyi for these! Photo: Alexis Goh
We had fun sharing more about our work with everyone. Thank you to the WWD organising committee for inviting us and see you all next time! Photo: Kay Chua.