Inspire I first learned about Project Orion through a scout friend of mine. He gave me a brief introduction and I went to the Scout of the World Award Discovery Workshop. I was introduced to the UN Sustainable Development Goals where I started to identify the needs of the community and our environment. Through the activities from the workshop, I understood the cause and effects of one’s action to the community and how much one can contribute to achieving a better and greater environment. The workshop widens my views and perspectives and made me feel the need to do my part. Learn & Decide Got to know from Sijie, our workshop director, about Project Orion and the goals behind doing this project. The goals are: • To create awareness on the importance of wildlife conservation. • Providing opportunities to Youths to increase their self and global awareness based on service learning methodology and scout method. • Providing a platform for youths to be trained to be future leaders in similar projects. • Impart the values of service learning to youths. Project Orion is a series of projects that are done in Setiu, Terengganu annually. It revolves around the conservation of turtles, helping the community there, by improving their facilities, to create a more conducive environment for the conservation of turtles and aid in maintaining the Turtles’ natural habitat. Talking about conservation of turtles, why do we need to do this? There are numerous poachers out there excavating turtle’s nest for their eggs to make a living. Leading to a decrease in the number of turtle hatchlings heading back towards the waters. Base on research, only 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10000 hatchlings made it to adulthood in the open sea and due to the many different factors, there is a drastic decrease in turtle population over the years causing many species of turtles to face extinction. Hence, the need to do turtle conservation. Do Project Orion V – Rovering with Turtles was the fifth project in the series of annual project collaborations with our host organization, World Wide Fund for Nature – Malaysia (WWF-Malaysia). Held from 14th June 2014 to 28th June 2014 in Setiu, Terengganu, Malaysia. Project Orion I, II, III and IV were completed in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013 respectively The project mainly consists of 8 parts: 1. Nest Excavation 2. Night Beach Patrol 3. Boat Painting 4. Kindergarten Mural Painting 5. SK Saujana English Programme 6. Toilet Construction 7. World Sea Turtle Day Road Show 8. Mangrove Replanting I will focus on Nest Excavation and Beach patrol which I felt that it is rather important to highlight this two. Nest Excavation Usually carried out 1-2 weeks after the eggs have begun to hatch. Digging about 1 meters deep into the nest, we will find the remaining of the eggs. The objectives are to: 1. Check the condition of all the eggs. 2. Salvage the nest to check if any turtle hatchlings are alive and were unable to release themselves from the nest due to certain reasons and save them. 3. Open unhatched eggs to find out the reason why it wasn’t hatched. It will usually be in the form of embryo or unfertilized. 4. Check for dead hatch-ling bodies, some with missing body parts which are suspected to be eaten by predators such as crabs. By doing nest excavation, we are gathering all these information for research purposes to aid in coming out with a solution to save and conserve even more turtles. It is easy to be done and anyone could initiate to help to do such a meaningful activity. Night Beach Patrol Every member of the Project Orion Team took their turn to go for a night patrol with the ranger every day at night. Patrolling along the beach, Telaga Papan 2, covering a distance of over 10km. The objectives are to: 1. Spot for turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. Bringing back those eggs to the hatchery to facilitate their hatching process to avoid predation. 2. Prevent poaching activities. It is particularly meaningful as we are doing our part to save many potential lives that may help in increasing the turtle’s population and we are changing ones live. Personally, I feel that the main takeaway from Project Orion is that it only takes one person, and the drive to do social good to influence and inspire others, then it becomes a cascading effect. And when that motivation is nurtured with the right mentors and skill set; the motivation becomes a Mission. Share During the project, we went for World Sea Turtle Day Road Show to spread awareness of turtle conservation. After Project Orion V, we organized a workshop regarding sea turtle fun facts and conservation for the cub scouts and a beach clean-up at Pasir Ris Park right after. The purpose is to educate the youths from young so to build in a right mentality towards conservation of the environment and the contribution to the community.