Singapore Polytechnic G-Pop @ SP (22 April 2008)

Team Seagrass joined other organizations such as ACRES and the Singapore Environmental Council, among many others, in the Singapore Polytechnic G-Pop @ SP event. Organised by the Singapore Polytechnic Environment Club (SPENV), it was an event to celebrate Earth Day and to promote Green initiatives.

It started with a mere trickle of visitors. Sam and Helen commented that I was like a ‘pasar malam auntie’ trying to entice visitors to come and look at our booth. However, the momentum of the crowd soon gathered when the primary school children came, bringing along their sense of curiosity and enthusiasm, to learn more about saving the earth.

Team Seagrass volunteers came armed with our arsenal of posters, pamphlets, monitoring equipment, games and exhibits. Kindly loaned by the Raffles Museum of Diversity Research, the exhibits of a horseshoe crab, a baby dugong, seahorses, a swimming crab and a sand dollar proved to be a crowd-puller.


But nothing reels them in like the baby dugong exhibit. Many visitors to the booth were just incredulous we even have dugongs coming in to our shores.


The Team Seagrass volunteers seized upon the opportunity to tell our visitors about the relationship between these animals and seagrass colonies, whether as a source of food or habitat. We also had an exhibit of live seagrass specimens and seaweed, dug up by Siti earlier in the morning, to show our visitors the differences between the two.

It was astounding to many visitors the sheer variety of marine life found amongst the seagrass meadows.

Freebies and games were the perennial fail-safe method to draw the crowds in too. Our match-and-win game, where students pick a cartoon drawing from a container and try to find its name from our posters and pamphlets, was a winner. Students kept coming back to play, in order to win the full set of 3 stickers. We hope, through this, the students become more aware of the types of seagrass present in our shores, as well as the marine life that it supports.

Those who came were entertained by the rhapsody of songs, rap and pledges, performed by the primary school children. Not to be outdone, one of the vendors also put up a song to promote the vegetarian lifestyle.

It was heartening to see so many people caring about the environment. We hope outreach events like this one create an impact to bring about greater improvements in how we treat the Earth.

Thanks to all who contributed to the Team Seagrass effort in the G-Pop @ SP event: Sam, Sijie, Gaytri, Helen, Vyna and Nor Aishah. Special mention goes to Chay Hoon for the super cute drawings used for the game; Weiling and Robin for transport of the specimens; Siti and Ria for their guidance leading up to this event!