How relevant is conservation to you?
IT is January 2020 – five university students are sitting on a panel, being moderated by a sixth student, before an audience comprising representatives from a range of organisations including corporations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the United Nations (UN) Development Programme.
The students represent Swinburne clubs and societies such as the dance, debaters and green clubs, as well as the creative-writing community.
They are speaking up, telling the older generation what conservation and the environment mean to them.
This forum, ‘Voices of the Youth for Conservation’, has been brought together in the wake of Greta Thunberg speaking up to persuade lawmakers and leaders to take action to prevent further environmental degradation and irreversible climate change.
The following month, the Swinburne Sarawak Green Club is once again working in full swing at the 15th Swinburne Sarawak Inter-School Debating Championship – hosting a ‘Green Club’ booth, ‘Green Club Kahoot’ quizzes and also encouraging secondary school students from around the country and region to write their thoughts, hopes and dreams on the ‘Tree of Life’ in between the debate rounds, running over a period of three days.
Then, the shutdown comes. The government enforces the Movement Control Order (MCO) and the campus is closed to staff and students. All classes are converted from face-to-face to online, and everyone is forced to stay at home.
The ‘Coronavirus Year’ has started in Kuching, and life can never be the same.
But the Swinburne Sarawak Green Club does not succumb to the apathy and lethargy that grip many along with real fear and anxiety.
The next exciting series of events planned in conjunction with the university’s 20th anniversary, ‘Eco Nights’, can no longer be held in person – but the club’s executive committee, led by President Elwin Chan Kok Wei, works out how the events can continue.
Over the next few months, the club organises and runs the ‘Earth Hour’ Instagram
and Twitter competitions, monthly online ‘Kahoot’ quizzes, and three talks covering a range of conservation issues – from community gardening, beach clean-ups and living sustainably, to orangutan conservation and ‘World Clean-Up Day’.
To do this, Swinburne Sarawak Green Club collaborates with other clubs and societies such as the Leo Club of Swinburne Sarawak and the Swinburne Sustainability Society at the Melbourne Campus; and works with conservation organisations such as the Kuching Beach Cleaners, Sarawak Eco-Warriors, and Sarawak Forestry Corporation.
In addition, Swinburne Sarawak Green Clu also collects old electronic gadgets for recycling and donates ‘paplets’ (notebooks made from paper used on one side) to SK Pelaman Sidunuk where the pupils are happy to be given the simple resource to practise their writing, and teachers are able to use them for their own notes.
We keep going
Life must go on during the ‘First Coronavirus Year’ – I call it the ‘First Coronavirus Year’ because we are in our second year now and though the vaccine is in sight, there are many variants of the virus emerging in different parts of the world.
This virus is resilient and adaptable; and so must we be if we’re to survive what looks like an increasingly apocalyptic world.
How can we pick up the mantel that the Swinburne Sarawak Green Club has shown us?
The student club kept going despite the bleak world that emerged in the pandemic.
The club’s motto, ‘Conservation Starts at Home’ was what the executive committee members had practised and more.
They persevered even as they worked to adapt to online lectures, tutorials and virtual meetings with team members, and strove to find a quiet space at home to continue their studies.
If life was hard for adults in the ‘First Year of the Coronavirus’, let’s give some thought to the team of students who have kept going through the early dark days of the pandemic all the way throughout the year and now, in the first quarter of the ‘Second Year of the Coronavirus’.
The students’ optimism has been and continues to be buoyed by their excellent team spirit, supporting each other through the ups and downs, and encouraging each other through scraggly hair days (no haircuts) and being separated in different states.
They can no longer go on field trips or on regular beach clean-ups, or meet in-person to create ‘paplets’ for needy communities – but they strive to work on what they can at home. They’re working on new projects for the year, and so must we all.
True, we must worry about bringing home the bread (or rice), and meeting our KPIs or supervisors’ expectations, but I think we can strive to keep our spirits up and to focus on what we can do, rather than what we cannot. We cannot put our lives on hold because of a virus. So, I’ll ask myself this question – what can I do while living in the era of the pandemic?
‘Be a good teacher even if I still can only meet my students online;
Encourage my students to be more than just receptacles of knowledge and information – help them to think critically and ask questions;
Provide my students opportunities to interact with each other outside the virtual classroom;
Help my students to improve their soft skills and to understand the need for conservation through the Debaters’ and Green clubs and the creative writing community;
Strive to improve my own knowledge and skills;
Care for others and have great empathy;
I won’t let a virus get me down’.
Dr Christina Yin is a senior lecturer in the School of Foundation Studies at Swinburne University
of Technology Sarawak Campus. She can be reached via email at cyin@swinburne.edu.my.
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