After many weeks in the field, one of our newest EFT members, Rory Thompson, sat down to explain the threats and behavior of this magnificent mammal. He also gave us a peek into what it was like to spot this tiny primate on an isolated island in the South China Sea!
After the past few weeks of training, new staff Imogen and Lucy have had an opportunity to reflect on their experiences of living in Asia for the first time and learning about the ecosystems that it holds.
Welcome to our first blog in the EFT Teacher Resources series. In this blog you will find a lesson plan to explain more about seeds and seed germination. We’ve provided printed resources and even the steps for a lab! Excite your students by letting them see nature in action!
Ecofieldtrips in partnership with Boys’ Town Adventure Centre have been organizing adventure-filled holiday camps in December 2021 & January 2022.
We offered exciting and engaging programmes catered to students above the age of 12. Our 3-day camps have merged the elements of nature discovery and the components of outdoor survival skills! We have a variety of activities customizable according to your requirements. Feel free to drop us an email at info@ecofieldtrips.com to find out more!
As international travel is still restricted making it impossible for most schools to partake in annual fieldtrips, our EFT Bali team has been working hard to develop a number of virtual fieldtrips and literally zoom Bali into classrooms around the World! We have a variety of trips, from CAS to ecology and sustainability, that can be a stand-alone trip or be included in our on-site Singapore trips.
This is one of the best win-win projects here in Bali, Plastic Exchange, addresses and solves 3 issues - Poverty, Environment and Education.
Poverty - particularly at this difficult time with enormous loss of income and employment due to COVID
Environment - solving local plastic pollution by collecting plastic garbage instead of burning or allowing it to pollute waterways and oceans
Education - long term mind set changes towards plastic pollution. People will hopefully no longer tolerate plastic garbage in their villages, rivers and seashores as they atomically remove the discarded plastic to get free rice!
Plastic Exchange
This community-led project gives the local youths the responsibility to create a better future for themselves and at the same time tackling a major environmental issue – plastic in the environment. Local youths manage the village collection point where families bring their collected plastics. Once centralised in the village, the plastic trash is sorted and brought to an industrial processing plant to be recycled into plastic pellets. The barter exchange means that for every 4kg of plastic, 1kg of rice is given out to the families. In many villages, as much as 1-2 tons of plastic has been removed. With such high volume of plastic comes the need for sponsorship to help pay for the rice.
Schools can immerse themselves virtually in the project and sponsor the rice for a village. Live interaction, speaking to the village youths as well as the families that exchange their plastic for rice ensures a lively and fun session whilst supporting this excellent project.
Bridget Teaching a Class
Initiated by our Ecofieldtrips Founder, Bridget Hedderman, “English is Fun” is a conversational class to teach English to children in a fun and interactive way. She was driven by the realisation that the children in her Bali village had been out of school for the past 18 months due to COVID-19. Now, the children come to the Bamboo House, our EFT activity centre in Bali, where Bridget, her friends and our interns teach English.
Our proposed programme for CAS groups is to set up a “buddy system” where international students can be paired with a child to learn English. The ability to commit to a longer term weekly interaction will benefit the children greatly. The age and proficiency varies greatly amongst the children in the village but they are delighted to share about living in a Balinese village.
Rice is one of the most important crops in the world, especially in Asia where it is the staple food and vital to feed a huge population. Rice cultivation in Bali involves ecology, culture, and religion. For example, the Subak system - the water management system in Bali paddy fields - is managed carefully by the farming communities and has been operating unchanged for over a thousand years! This unique sustainable irrigation system involves rice terracing, water channeling and rice temples in over 20,000 hectares! The water management is under the authority of the priests and address the Tri Hita Karana Philospohy.
Sunset over a Rice Paddy Field
Connecting with people
Connecting with nature
Connecting with the spirit world.
Join the EFT Bali team and the farmers' family in the rice paddy fields of Jati Luwih for an exceptional live virtual experience or spend a day working alongside the children at The Astungkara Way to really understand how Bali culture and agriculture coexist in harmony!
Dyatmika School’s Permaculture Garden
At The Dyatmika School, students run a community permaculture garden that allows them to actively engage with the environment. The day to day care of the permaculture garden is managed by the students and funds from the sale of the fresh produce goes towards various fundraising projects or is invested back into the garden.
The Dyatmika students are keen to share their knowledge, concepts and practices of permaculture (the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient) through GoogleMeet channels with any interested international school.
We are offering “COVID-proof”, exciting, and engaging sustainability summer camps for students of all ages. Our 2 to 5 days summer camps will revolve around the theme of sustainability, and involve service learning to develop skills that are central to every school system. This modular program allows for fully customisable choices of icebreakers, interactive teamwork games, hands-on activities focusing on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, and academic topics in Biology, ESS and Geography.
This camp is design to be COVID-flexible! It can run on-site with physical hands-on components or be fully off-site/virtual and still hands-on and active!
Read on for more information!
——————————————————————
Virtual Service Learning | Sustainability | IB-CAS | IB-IDU
Since December, (large) groups of students from around the world are proving that Virtual Service Learning Trips are awesome…
Kitchen Wastewater System
· Help an Indonesian family build a lifesaving water & sanitation system – together, over Zoom!
· Recycle all village plastic in the process – via a hands-on inter-country Zoom competition!
· Help the family design a healthy diet on 15 cents (!) per meal – and help them prepare as future homestay
· Get ready to visit them in real life once the borders are open – enjoying the homestay program you designed yourself!
· While on Zoom, act as movie-director – create awesome social media to inspire others to follow in your footsteps ...
Work with the World’s highest decorated edu-tourism operator + Asia’s top IBDP fieldtrip agency
· IBO Workshop venue – for ESS and Biology
· The World #1 Eco Operator – by unanimous judges’ decision, London
· Tripadvisor #1 Resort in Bintan – ahead of Club Med, Banyan Tree etc
· Singapore’s most sustainable SME – in 2016, 2017: Minister Masagos Zulkifli calls LooLa an inspiration for all companies to follow
· EcoFieldTrips – Asia’s leading agency in IBDP fieldtrips
2 – 5 days, 15 - 200 pax
· All programs are fully interactive, with plenty of opportunities to get engaged hand-on
· Ideal fit for (pre) IB-CAS, IB-IDU and Bio, ESS, Business, Geography, Science, and Language trips
· We can fully customise the program so as to suit your school’s mission, budget and time constraints.
· The attached document has a detailed modular program that gives some idea of how you could customise.
· Ideal preparation for a real trip – after COVID, you can visit the families whose lives you have enriched over Zoom.
· Fantastic "career boost" – gain profound knowledge/achievement about the biggest issue of our time: sustainability
Take a half-hour tour, and learn how individual students are changing the world of sanitation
· We’re happy to run an interactive highly engaging 20 minute presentation for the management to get a clear idea
· The presentation is free of charge, but we’re ready to bet: you'd tell us that you want to join the cause!
——————————————————————
Feel free to drop us an email at info@ecofieldtrips.com to find out more!
Geography Field Trip on Pulau Ubin
This first half of the year, we have completed several IB Biology and Geography fieldwork trips successfully in line with the current COVID-19 Safe Management Measures. Here in Singapore, we continue to offer Biology and ESS subjects in ecosystems such as rainforest, freshwater, intertidal, mangroves, birds and butterfly, and coastal geography and human geography for Geographers.
We are proud to share the development of a new ecosystem option – Urban Ecosystem. As more than half of the people on Earth live in cities, it is especially important to understand how biodiversity patterns occur in our man-made environments. Urban ecosystems are dynamic ecosystems that have similar interactions and behaviours as natural ecosystems. Unlike natural ecosystems however, urban ecosystems are a hybrid of natural and man-made elements whose interactions are affected not only by the natural environment, but also culture, personal behaviour, politics, economics and social organisation.
Bishan - Ang Mo Kio Park as an example of an urban park in Singapore
In Singapore, urban environment is everywhere around us, in the streets, urban parks and residential areas. Students can focus on topics such as insects or herbivory counts, plant diversity, or impact of community cats. They can even compare a chosen topic such as macaques between an urban environment and natural environment.
Ecofieldtrips have been actively adopting the UNSDG (UN Sustainable Development Goals) in our programs and activities. We aim for all students that have been through our programs will have a better understanding of the SDGs.
Since last year, we have developed UNSDG-themed trips which revolve around one or more of the goals. These NYAA (National Youth Achievement Awards) and DofE Award (Duke of Edinburgh Award) programs include a long hike where our Ecofieldtrips staff will cover different aspects of the chosen goals throughout the walk. Different activities can be incorporated to extend this into a week-long program.
Read our previous blog on an UNSDG module that we created!
With the relaxation of COVID-19 controls into Phase Two in Singapore, EFT has successfully conducted in-person field trips within Singapore for Canadian International School and SJI International School for their IA project. Running a trip amid COVID-19 meant that things had to be run differently. Read on to find out what measures were put in place to ensure the safety of everyone.
Here at EFT, we have been working to adopt the UNSDG in our programmes and activities as best as we can. On top of attaching the relevant SDG to existing activities, we have also been developing a sustainability module that can be added on to our trips This module includes 3 levels for students of different age groups, from 8-year old to university level.
162 Joo Chiat Road #03-02 Singapore, 427437
+65 6221 2495
