ALL FOR THE CAUSE...

Posted by: Sofia Johari

Working in the conservation field is more than a full time job. It is expected, especially in the field, apart from having to fulfill your workplan objectives, you are also have to fulfill the expectations of the stakeholders/community. And expectation becoming higher and higher the longer you are within a site. Since there's only 6 of us within a 1.02 million hectares of a proposed marine park (Tun Mustapha Park) with almost 100,000 people to reach, the team members have to become very efficient in delegating work and multi tasking. All of us are now Community officers @ Marine Biologist @ administrators @ clerks @ office boy/girl @ drivers & communicators (except for team leader... still one lah). Having meeting with stakeholders till midnight (resulting in red blood shot eyes in the morning) and saturdays & sundays is not uncommon. However, we are enjoying our work as we believe in the cause (WWF/conservation cause of course...) plus having great team members.

Having volunteers helped us a lot in getting things done more efficiently. We are very much debted to these people. Sometimes we have 2 or 3 events (usually ad hocs that U just need to commit to) running at the same time at different places... how do we solve this? There's no fixed solution to this, u just need to be creative and think very fast everytime. It's a great mental exercise!

Below I give you example of events running at the same time at different geographical location (one in Karakit, Banggi and the others in Kota Kinabalu City).

A) ONE DISTRICT ONE PRODUCT EXPO

-This is one of the activity to promote alternative livelihood program at our demonstration site, Maliangin Island and as part of capacity building activity for the alternative livelihood program. We started preparation for this event 3 months before the event on 18th-21st June 2009. Stuffs that we prepared: a) A 15 minutes video on the process of making hand woven mat; b) selecting & preparing 4 women from Maliangin Island to go to the Expo; c) Helping out Maliangin women preparing exhibition materials-mats; d) logistic and yadaa... yadda... yadda....

The VIP's during the launching of Expo

Chief Minister gave a thumbs up for local product

The Maliangin women interacting with visitors

Giving demonstration on making mat

Hermond Magupin, our intern for 3 months helped us in producing a 15 minutes video on the making process of hand woven mat os Maliangin.

Maliangin women posing with their mats at the booth.
* We got 2 thumbs up from the Department of Fisheries for our booth :)

B) INTERNS ACTIVITIES AT KARAKIT, BANNGI ISLAND

- A day or 2 before the Expo, we received two very lovely and giggly interns... We cant bring them back to KK for the Expo as they just arrived, they expect to do activities in Kudat and the island and we have enough people helping out for the EXPO. So, we decided to send these 2 lovely young ladies to Karakit to continue our Green Lifestyle campaign with the Banggi Youth Club, this will fill up the gap of our presence there, the Assistant District Officer had always complained that our presence on Banggi Island is not enough despite having the Banggi Youth Club members stationed there doing A LOT of beach clean ups.... well we cant be there all the time - cm'on lah there's only 6 of us. We gave the girls guidelines on what kind of things they can do on the island with the help of Banggi Youth Club members. Their activities were done during saturday and sunday to get more participation from the kids and we kept in touch by handphone.

Natalie with her brigade of kids during weekend.

Nat & Pei Xuan taught the school kids English as requested by them (great job Nat & Pei Xuan!)

Collecting garbage on the weekend (WWF & Banggi Youth Club routine in Banggi at the request of the Assistant District Officer).

Nat & Pei Xuan organized a coloring contest as part of the green lifestyle campaign activity at BEAC - Banggi Environmental Activity Centre.

Pei Xuan with one of the coloring competetion participant.

C) Some of our team members at the same time have to attend important meeting somewhere else.

The management always reminded us that we cant do everything. True enough... We are very well aware that we cant do everything, but U just cant help trying to do everything when ur in the field and stakeholders/community around U expected so much of U and the organization PLUS they are there AT your doorstep.

One of our activity objective in Kudat-Banggi PCA is to build the capacity of the community especially the youths by getting them to participate in our activities as volunteers. Impact of volunteering is always constant. Volunteers will have more personal and genuinely caring attitude in an activity or service. Based on WWF-experience in Kudat PCA, genuine volunteers will do more than just providing extra help, some of the volunteers will become quite vocal in communicating conservation messages and setting example to their peers. It is important that volunteers are appropriately acknowledge by building their skills relevant to their role or potential role in the society as well as to ensure WWF-Malaysia is getting maximum benefit from the volunteers.