Findings

It is currently estimated that 15 589 species both plants and animals are in danger of becoming extinct, according to the report by the world conservation union (IUCN) one third of the endangered species this includes one in three amphibians are endangered. This news may seem shocking but most of the public were not aware of this news as seen from the survey. In view of this, our team has decided to set out on this project and help to raise the awareness of the plight of amphibians. Throughout this project, we can see that from the public response, many people do not know the endangerment of amphibians. It can also be concluded that the situation now is very critical.

Why is this happening as you may ask? One of many reasons is that people nowadays or perhaps the world now is seeing too many frogs. Frogs are seen almost everywhere and people are still eating frogs. Therefore, they are most probably not aware of the plight frogs are facing.

Secondly, people do not understand them. From the survey, it is indeed shocking to see the lack of information and care for frogs people have. Most do not even know what frogs are! There is not enough awareness among the public. People just do not know how to save them. They do not understand them and just as humans did not cause many other species to be endangered, they were not aware; amphibians may be the worst-hit as they may be hit with pollutants or virus in both land and water. There are many documented effects of human activities on frogs and their habitats. The destruction of their habitats, having non-native species being introduced and the use of poisonous pesticides are some of the effects.

Moreover, there are many indirect threats frogs place the frog populations in jeopardy. An excellent example is climate change, which is an accumulation of long-term activities carried out by humans. Humans, just like amphibians, are facing new infectious diseases which are threats to precious lives. Amphibians are facing a threat from chytrid fungus, a little understood disease that is causing many frogs to perish throughout the world.

How can you do your part?

After talking so much, you may ask, how do we as individuals help? Easy, do your part! Every individual should help spread the message to every individual around. Just send a text message or talk to your friend “ Are you aware the plight amphibians are facing now? Save them now!

One can also keep or create a frog habitat to rear frogs to help save them. As long as every individual can do his or her part, imagine how many frogs we can save!

What we did throughout the course of the project

Our team participated in various activities organized by the zoo to raise public awareness of the plight these frogs face now. Each of us had weak and strong points. Different skills and specialties of each allowed us to work together smoothly and well. We collaborated well by sharing duties amongst ourselves and splitting up the jobs. All in all, the work done together was very productive.

In addition, we collaborated with the zoo. It was engaging and fun and it allowed us to learn many things about amphibians as well as to carry out community involvement projects with them. We were also present in many of the activities which they had for the public. It was enriching and informative. We took part in various activities organized by the zoo to raise public awareness and help in our knowledge on the frogs. In turn, we were allowed to carry out our surveys and interviews in the zoo.
We managed to rope in the school population as well to let them know more about the amphibians from our school to begin with. Moreover, we collaborated with the IT department of our school to help us with some IT problems. Our Assistant Coach, Mrs. Aileen Chor was also of great help to us by helping us to settle other technical problems. These experiences have indeed helped to shape and nurture our thoughts and minds.

Problems encountered

Occasionally, there were some disputes among the members, however, they are inevitable but all of us got together quickly. We managed to work well and finish tasks on time, complete objectives set during each project meeting. This project has certainly brought us together as friends and has aided a lot in our learning.

Collaborating with the zoo also brought us a lot of problems, as this was our first time doing this. All of us, being first timers, were clueless as to how to approach the zoo to collaborate with them. At this point in time if not for our teacher mentor, Mr. Kelvin Yap, who was instrumental in helping us communicate with the zoo at the beginning, we would even have been able to carry out this project.

After we establish a great partnership with the zoo, more problems started to surface. As when the zoo started to ask us to help them in their activities, we realized that none of these activities aided in our project and that the requests were very demanding. Therefore, we wanted to end the collaboration. However, it dawned on us that collaboration meant that we had to give and take. We also that we had to take as we gave meaning that when we agreed to do something we had look for parts in the request that would aid us in our project. We realized that we could not just go up to them and ask them to do something for us.

Lessons Learnt

Through all these problems we learnt a lot of life lessons such as people relations skills (when asking for collaboration) and thinking on your feet (when being ask to do something). However collaborating with the zoo was not only all problems there were many fun times during the collaborations as well.

Through working with the zoo, we learnt more about the endangerment of these poor amphibians and were glad we could finally do something to help them instead of just talking about it. We really enjoyed this project very much and were relieved we actually embarked on this.

Improvements

However, there were some improvements to be made as well.  Plan of time. We could have planned our schedule in a more appropriate way. Time and dates of the meeting times clashed with our co-curricular activity competitions and training sessions, and we had to rush reports to be presented to the teachers. By managing our time more properly, we could have put in more effort to make a better report. Better Division of Task is another point. Sometimes, as they were too many tasks, some of us ended up with 3 or 4 tasks to finish with a fast-approaching deadline while some did not do as much. Better spreading of messages is also another improvement to be made. By working with the zoo and other mentors, sometimes, messages given to the leader may not be spread efficiently, leading to a lack in response which may cause a disastrous effect. Messages could be spread to the team and everyone involved in a more efficient and faster way.

On the whole, we feel that this project and the collaboration with the zoo was very fulfilling not because of the high points during the project nor because of the numerous problems we faced, but because of the solutions and lessons that we learnt from these problems. So, hopefully in the near future we hope that we might be able to collaborate with zoo or another institution to carry out another fun and fulfilling project.