Friday, February 28th, we hosted a group of wonderful staff and children from Southern International School in Hatyai (SIH) at the Phadam Camp and Forest. SIH is a private, British Curriculum-based school with students ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to Secondary age levels. We had the pleasure of having their ‘year 5’ and up join us for a day full of conservation-inspired activities and a tree-planting project.
The day started with about 25 eager students and 6 different staff members piling into a bus to make their way to the Camp. Upon arrival, a warm welcome was provided by the IVCA staff as we were also quite excited to invite the youth to share in such an important event. We started the morning activities in our outdoor classroom with a discussion on Conservation, reviewing various vocabulary related to our environment, conservation and reforestation. The kids were engaged and answering the questions they knew, and participating in learning those they didn’t. From here, we asked the students to paint or draw on a piece of recycled wood what their idea of conservation was, what the forest meant to them and/or what message they wanted to convey about it. The creativity and ideas were amazing and the kids interpreted and expressed their ideas and messages beautifully! We allowed these to dry as we finished our morning with a snack and packed our things for our nature hike!
The hike was about 30 minutes long, under the canopy of trees in the forest, the sun high and hot above us. The students and staff were troopers as we trekked through the woods on uneven trails until we came to a shallow creek. Each student was given a scavenger hunt list of items to keep an eye out for on the trail – flowers, insects, various tree species and fungi – to fully appreciate and recognize the natural world around them. We parked at the creek for lunch, the kids splashing their feet in the water and enjoying cooling off. With their help, we hung their wooden signs amongst the clearing on all of the visible, attainable trees nearby to forever greet and mark the wise words and depictions of what our reforestation efforts represent. The kids truly enjoyed seeing that their work and art would be displayed for all visitors of the forest to enjoy! Soon after, we divided the students into small groups, designating a few to dig the holes for our seedlings, while the others followed close behind to plant their trees in the ground. We stayed near the creek for a water source in proximity as the current season is so hot and rain isn’t coming often. The students marked their tree locations proudly, snapped photos and enjoyed seeing their efforts come to fruition.
Upon safe arrival back to the camp, we discussed briefly the importance of what they had done that day. The critical need for these fresh, young minds to understand the impact of their actions and what we can do to save the world, even if just one tree and forest at a time.
IVCA takes great pride and joy in spreading this knowledge, getting to share this compassion and to watch the future generations of southern Thailand take action and get involved! Thank you to each of them, to the amazing staff that was able to join us and to SIH in general for taking part in such a fun day with us!
