EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES - Environmental Education Race (EE Race)

​On the 2nd of September, BSBCC started the day with big preparations for the Environmental Education Race (EE Race) activity at the Centre. The EE Race is an environmental education programme held annually in the heart of Borneo districts of Sabah. It is organized by the Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC) under the Sabah Forestry Department, together with many government and private organizations.

​The aim of the race is to enhance and deepen teacher's knowledge and experiences on the environment. The course, features 80% outdoor activities, participant-centered learning, group effort and interesting environment-related assignments.

Participants reading through their assignment task.

When registering for an EE Race, all participants do not have any idea of what they are about to learn or where they are going! The first activity was the “Bear Acting” activity where the participants were placed in mini cages as display animals. The BSBCC staff acted as visitors, taking pictures with camera flashes from outside the cages. The purpose of this activity is to allow the participants to experience what it feels like to be badly treated by people who visit displayed animals.

EE Race participants inside the cage.

Later, the participants shared their experience to everyone. The next activity was preparing “toys” or enrichment for the bears. The participants were given various materials such as bamboo, ginger leaves, ropes, honey, peanut butter and many kinds of spices. They were encouraged to use their creativity to construct "toys" for the bears. They produced great enrichment and the bears loved it! The participants continued with the tour around the centre. This focuses more on sun bear ecology and the aims of BSBCC as a conservation and rehabilitation centre for sun bears in Sabah. Since sun bears are the  “least known” species among the bears in the world, describing the sun bear facts to the participants are fresh and fascinating. We hope the participants enjoyed their activities at BSBCC.  We are looking forward for more exciting activities on next EE Race!