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Vol 14 No 2 A project by the ‘Nature Nurtures’ Group Wireless Learning Trail @ Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve Flickr comes to SBWR Nurturing the Sungei Buloh Forest and Mangroves Earth Day Celebration World Environment Day Celebrations World Migratory Bird Day Celebrations Not Merely an Entrance to a Nature Park		A project by the ‘Nature Nurtures’ Group By Jeanne Tan Senior Outreach Officer What do you get when you put together the colours of nature and creative young minds? At the beginning of this year, when the “Nature Nurtures” programme was first introduced in Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Iris Li, one of SBWR’s volunteers, suggested that it would be lovely to start a fabric project with volunteers and Chestnut Drive Secondary School (CDSS) as our partner school. This project would allow these students to adopt a project that incorporated values such as team work, perseverance, creativity, patience and respect, as well as learn a new art. Ultimately, our end objective was to let these students from such a programme have a sense of achievement and ownership over what they have started. It was important that they know their achievements were acknowledged. With logistics planned out by Iris and the outreach team at SBWR, this collage of fabrics and colours took place almost immediately. The fabric project was completed and showcased on World Environment Day, 5 June & 17 November 2007 during the students’ graduation day. Lovingly hand-made by students, teachers and volunteers under NParks’ ‘Nature Nurtures’ programme, this project was sponsored by Shell Eastern Petroleum Pte Ltd. All the fabric pieces were painstakingly stitched together by Iris herself. The fabric collage featured the diversity of wildlife and patterns of nature at the Wetland Reserve. All in all, the fabric took 11 weeks and 40 pairs of hands to complete. A variation of felt pictures, appliques, and different types of beads, buttons, ribbons and fabric paints were used for the collage. In line with the theme of reduce, reuse and recycle, many pieces were created from old pieces of cloth. All designs were an inspiration made possible by an appreciation and understanding of this wetland reserve and our environment. It reminds us that there is precious biodiversity in our nature reserves and we hold the future of these species in our hands.
		© Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve