Blog posts

• “Envirofest 2009 and the handing over of The Blue Plan,” by N. Sivasothi. Habitatnews, 22 May 2009.
• “Envirofest Day 1,” by Ria Tan. Wild Shores of Singapore, 23 May 2009.
• “Hantu Bloggers @ Envirofest 2009,” by Debby Ng. The Hantu Blog, 23 May 2009.
• “Envirofest Day 2,” by Ria Tan. Wild Shores of Singapore, 24 May 2009.
• “Envirofest 2009 a welcome success,” by Debby Ng. The Hantu Blog, 24 May 2009.
• “Environment Minister gets acquainted with Hantu Blog,” by Debby Ng. The Hantu Blog, 25 May 2009.

Photo albums

• boonsong: Flickr album (great photos).
• habitatnews: Flickr album (1st day shots over-exposed)

This is one of the highlights of Envirofest.  People of the public can stand a chance to win a free nature trip, free souvenirs or take part in our daily lucky draw.

Each participant will be given a small card (a quarter of a A4-size paper). This card will be utilized on both sides. Participant are supposed to gather 6 stamps on the first page of this card. They can go around the exhibition to gather stamp from the environmental groups. However, this stamp is not given “freely”. The participants must engage in the individual booth’s activities to earn a stamp. After gathering all 6 stamps, they will be eligible for a chance at the Lucky Dip. If there is no luck at the Dip, they can still take part in the daily lucky draw, which will require them to fill up the back page of the Lucky Dip card.

Vouchers will be given out at the daily Lucky draw!

Volunteers from Cedar Girls’ School are designing and manning this booth for Envirofest! Thanks a lot, girls!

The NJC Greenlink students who are co-organising Envirofest turned up and we found the room left unlocked helpfully. So we all settled down and got started after a roll call – it helps that we mostly know each other so we could figured out who was coming and get started.

The NJC students presented the theme for the year – the family, and provided an overview on powerpoint that featured the fringe events, the tagline options and publicity.

In addition to the NJC students, Wenhua has recruited AJC and Cedar Girls Secondary students. Of course, Wenhua was her usual whirlwind self, having just come after her last exams as a student over at NTU. As she rapidly fired information at us, I’d stopped multi-tasking and concentrated like the rest did!

We had 21 organisations on board – with the venue and date changes she has been battling with these past few months (partly due to the depressed economy), it was inevitable that some organisations had other commitments (including an AGM!). recruitment is not over and with some new faces to the scene, a clearly defined lifestyle section looks to be possible for the first time.

With most of the unknowns out of the way, a discussion broke out amongst the biodiversity groups to see if a trail, anchored by NPArks, would be possible. The venue at Toa Payoh Hub posed some challenges due to its porous and crowded nature and we pondered over a rough map to see if a new approach would be possible.

Since we’re (wisely) adopting the “one step at a time” philosophy to Envirofest, after a discussion, we decided to experiment with the biodiversity groups this year and see what we could learn from the experience for future years.

Will it work, will it not work? We’ll see…

Now its down to each of us to recruit manpower, train our guides and get ready with information about the various groups as well as the special free events for the public AFTER Envirofestt. It certainly is going to be a great event to learn about grassroots environmental volunteerism in Singapore!

Our third and final meeting is on 15th May 2009 at Singapore Botanic Gardens at 7.00pm. We should all be ready by then!

This year, we are very honoured to have Minister Yaacob Ibrahim as our Guest-of-Honour again! He will be gracing the event on 23 May.

Finally!! Top Number 1 headache for Envirofest is getting the venue. Of course, the Top Number 2 headache is getting the $$$.>

And talking about $$$, having Envirofest in June means we are no longer eligible for SHINE Festival funding. I have been thinking about how Envirofest can leverage on SHINE Festival to make it an even bigger event. So when my friend first broke the news that all weekends of July were fully booked, I broke down. No July = No SHINE Festival = No good funding.

Alright, there is no point licking my wound over this. We immediately booked the best next date which is the beginning of June. It is actually what we wanted in the first place. It will be Great Singapore Sale and the crowd will be impossible!! On top of that, it will also be the start of the school holidays. That means a lot of things: 1) more young children and youths in the crowd; 2) more involvement from interested school groups; 3) various eco groups can have post-Envirofest activities and trips throughout the whole of the school holiday!

Wonderful!

As for the funding, I will continue to source for more options.

After sharing my entire things-to-do list for Envirofest with my Best Friend, who happens to be teaching in Anderson Junior College, he exclaimed, “You have found just the right person for this!”

He shared that AJC is trying to let their students participate in some green initiatives, but they still haven’t got anything firm up yet. He recommended me to send invitation and Envirofest proposal to the teacher I/C and see if they are willing to come in as a student group.

This is exactly what I will call as WIN-WIN situation!!

So far, I can sense that AJC is keen, but the teachers are so busy with their work these days that I still haven’t got a YES from them yet.

In my proposal to AJC, I shared with them that Envirofest would need exhibition guides (who are capable of speaking English and Mandarin/Malay/any other dialects) to lead public around our exhibition. On top of that, I am also looking for students who have better writing skills and discipline than me to do reporting and media kit.

This is how we can complement one another! In return, we can put up their school logo for publicity, feature them in our media kit and the students might even receive interviews from the press!

I sincerely hope AJC can be part of the Envirofest team. With more capable people on the team, I am 100% sure we all can achieve higher height!!

• Wen Hua brought us up to speed with operations (she was excited and spoke very fast),
• Karen shared how NParks had grown in its exhibition presentation by learning from others and evaluating each effort in order to maximise the impact of outreach,
• I explained the value of Envirofest we had recognised and how a little preparation and planning might help and
• Ria explained the significance of the month of July to NYC and SHINE and how Wen Hua was tapped into that.

The community was easily supportive of the practical plan presented about for Envirofest – with everyone struggling with a full schedule in the year, it will be nice to share one major collaborative effort with everyone that maximises our combined attractions.

So the public will get a buffet table of grassroots and governmental efforts in nature and the environment, green products, animal welfare, and hopefully a peek into sustainable living as well. This time there will be an array of trips and events they can sign up for immediately after. Who says nothing in life is free?!

The array of groups and issues on display will also serve as as educational opportunity for green groups in schools and JCs too. A group could pick 2-3 issues that they might to highlight in their own school – at Envirofest they can tap on some very experienced people and material, as well as study the various communication methods in play over the two days. Many of us have already learnt from each other and have been at this for decades, so what better place for mentorship?

Of course, Envirofest will also be an opportunity for the groups to get to know each other well instead of meeting only during the exhibition itself when we are focusing on attending to the public. These early meetings will allow some coordinated effort and I could see wheels already turning that evening about collaboration during the post-Envirofest offerings!

During the discussion that spontaneously interrupted the introductions through out the 90 minutes, a variety of issues were highlighted and evaluated – it was certainly a great delight discussing such issues with a bunch of very experienced practitioners in the local scene! Most have struggled with the issues and so everyone could recognise the value of practical ideas as well as the difficulties of some realities.

But boy, oh boy, does this bunch have the fire burning in them or what? I am really looking forward to meeting them again!

When I first reached the foodcourt to meet Jamie at 7.10 pm, I already spotted many greenies among the tables. I must admit I was already getting nervous in meeting these veteran green volunteers. I sincerely hope I can garner their support for Envirofest 2009 (and of course various Envirofest in the coming years). Envirofest is really for them!!

Alright, though I was a bundle of nervous energy, I was very amazed at the attendance of this meeting. There were …

1. Me!
2. Siva - Toddycats!
3. Ria – WildSingapore
4. Karen – NParks
5. Shawn Lum – Nature Society
6. Brandon – NEA
7. Grant – Green Volunteers
8. Jaki – Sea Shepherd
9. Gaytri Meriange – Team Seagrass
10. Yeow – Vegetarian Society
11. Andy – Team Seagrass
12. Ann – Waterways Watch Society
13. James – ACRES
14. Ley Kun – Naked Hermit Crabs
15. Debby – The Hantu Bloggers
16. Eugene – AsiaIsGreen
17. Grace – SEC
18. Sherlene – NJC Greenlink
19. Jamie
20. Yunus – Kolam Ayer CC

Meeting with friends of Envirofest

That was surely an enthusiastic crowd, everyone had some experience to share, an idea to propose and suggestion for improvement!

I forgot when was the last time I had such a dynamic meeting! Hmmm, this was 100% participation from everyone. WOW~

This is the summary of what we had discussed and would follow up on:

• Participating organisations can showcase their works in various creative form. For eg, SEC suggested the very cool Segway (which I’ve always dreamt of inviting to Envirofest); Sea Shepherd hopes to have a huge inflatable shark on display, marine groups can bring diving gears for kids or youths to try on, Toddycats! will bring down their specimens, Team Seagrass has their seagrass on display too!
• Besides exhibition on the ground, groups which have any public programmes or stage items can use a timeslot on our stage to ra-ra the crowd. I am waiting for Dr Vilma to link me up with Woodlands Ring Primary School, heard that they have a skit to share about eco-living. Any organisations which are keen in putting up something, please feel free to inform me.
• One of the issues we touched on was the giving out of freebies. Some of us were concerned if we could attract crowds without freebies, some agreed that we could use many other forms to entice our audience. We could work more on this in the coming meetings.
• My own personal objective is to just to introduce the various nature related projects and trips to the public. So I sincerely hope organisations which have exisiting trips or outings could open at least one session to allow public to sign up during Envirofest. This could be one of the freebies we can give out. For those who don’t do trips, I hope we can come out with some post-event activities with our creativity and capacity.
• I am still in the midst of applying for grant and venue. Will continue to update everyone~
• Together with NJC Greenlink, we will continue getting more organisations and clubs to join Envirofest.

There was wireless at SBG so that allowed the registration form to be prepared on the spot. When the rest approve it by tomorrow, it can be sent out along with a blurb to the various groups.

Wen Hua has volunteered to revisit her old job of contacting participants. We needn’t really feel guilty about burdening her—it will be fun to contact the many friends she made over the 2006 and 2008 festivals. And she did convince us that her almost completed final year project and lecture schedule are not in jeopardy so we relented gratefully.