A new booklet for schools about the Heart of Borneo and the importance of taking care of our forests and the environment will soon be launched and distributed to schools in Brunei and elsewhere in Borneo. The new booklet, which is written and compiled by Peter Boyce of CfBT, based on original material by WWF, follows up on a previous booklet produced in 2007. But this time the booklet will be aimed at a slightly younger reader, will be translated into Malay and Indonesian, and will be distributed outside Brunei too.

 

The British High Commission is helping finance the project and High Commissioner HE Mr Rob Fenn said "I am delighted to lend our support to this initiative, and proud of the involvement of British government, activists and educators. It is just this sort of local collaboration that we need at the global level to help educate people and tackle the real problems of environmental degradation and climate change. I hope the booklet will encourage young people to see the value and necessity of leading greener lives."

 

Author Peter Boyce, who also wrote the 2007 version, said "We produced the original booklet for the Borneo Global Issues Conference but thought that the message about caring for our environment and the fact that our very existence depends on trees was an important one for younger inhabitants of Borneo to hear. So the new booklet is pitched at a slightly younger student."

 

Gavin Cowley of CfBT said "The booklet will be a valuable teaching aid and not just for English teachers. It should also prove useful in other subjects so we took the decision to translate the English into Malay and Indonesian to sit alongside the English and enable wider use and a wider readership".

 

WWF is doing much work to promote the Heart of Borneo and the booklet is based on some of their own material. "This booklet makes a very valuable contribution to the educational approach that WWF is supporting in the Heart of Borneo initiative. It will help to bring the natural world alive in the minds of students and others in the schools and local communities in the Heart of Borneo in Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia." said Adam Tomasek, WWF HoB Network Initiative Leader during his visit to Brunei”.

 

The booklet carries some sad examples of how man is destroying the environment for short-term gain but longer-term loss. But it also features some good news such as the International School Brunei's Million Trees Project, showing how it is possible to galvanise individuals to take collective action to repair some of the degraded forests. The network that ISB Executive Principal David Taylor has built up elsewhere in Borneo through this project will prove useful in getting the booklet distributed outside Brunei.

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