Socialization in Junior High School

Saturday (10/3) is the last day of our pilot project of campaign to junior and high school students in Sub-district of Seruway. This in-door event is a continuation of our education program that started since October of 2011. Sixty students was attended our socialization program in SMP Negeri 1 (Junior High School No 1) Sub-district of Seruway on that day. The facilitators consist of Joko Guntoro, Yusriono, Devianta – all are the members of Satucita – and a teacher of Biology from that junior high school. The attendees are consist of all of grades (grade VII, VIII, IX) in junior high school.

This socialization activity was held in three hours, from 09.30 am until 12.30 am. At this event, Joko Guntoro was presented the status and preservation efforts of Painted Terrapin (Batagur borneoensis), not only in local level, but also in national and global level. “Painted Terrapin is listed as critically endangered and also listed as 25 endangered freshwater turtles in global scale” Joko said to students.

After presentation, a dialogue session between facilitators and students was held. Students were really enthusiasm to this. More than of 16 students were asked questions to facilitators. The questions are really interesting and sometime is funny such as questions from Siti Nurjanah, 14 years old female, grade VIII. She asked to facilitators “Have you ever eat this turtle eggs and how we can give suggestions to our family that this turtle is critically endangered?”.

To these questions Joko answered “None of us here including me (Joko), Mr. Yusriono and Mr. Devianta have ever eat the Painted Terrapin eggs. May be someday when their population in is abundant in the wild we will eat, but we don’t know when we can eat them if their eggs always harvested by people. There will never can be regeneration if you, your parents and all of us eat them! You may say to your parents that the Painted Terrapin population is almost extinct in the wild so may be they will understand or if you may asked your parents to read the guide book we give to you”.

After this in-door campaign is completed and has been reached hundreds of students, a survey to investigating the student’s awareness changes will be conducted. By comparing the result of pre-campaign and post-campaign survey, we will have positive evidence whether the campaign is successful to change the student’s awareness of Painted Terrapin (Batagur borneoensis) or not.

We would like to thanks to Keidanren Nature Conservation Fund (KNCF) to support this environmental education project. Also, we would like to thanks for each school for their participation and cooperation.