ALL IN A DAY'S WORK: Raft Building and Scuba Diving
Added to website: 24 April 2008
JPF/CCC Programme: Phase Two Update
The Jack Petchey/CCC Programme Launch
In March CCC invited Monty Halls, explorer and TV celebrity and Geoff Russell-Jones down to the try-dive pool at the London International Dive Show to offically launch the Petchey Programme 2008, with the handover of a giant laminated cheque in the name of reef conservation!
Expedition Training Course
During February and March more than 1400 pupils, in 27 schools, across 17 boroughs in the Jack Petchey catchment area had presentations given to them by our Education Officer Pete Mandara. The presentations was design to inspire young people to get involved and take some action to prevent the loss of biodiversity to coral reefs worldwide. To help them achieve this, we organised an intensive ‘Expedition Training Course’ for 50 successful applicants hosted over 2 days on the 17th and 18th of April. The event was all about rising to the challenge and they stepped up to them all, including team building games, brain teasers, a live conservation debate and even giving them the chance to try out diving themselves thanks to our friends at Andark.
Day One: Broadstone Warren Scout Site
The day started off nice and slow with a few Icebreaker exercises to ease the scholars into the event; the exercises helped us all, staff included! Once everyone had got to know each other, the team building activities soon followed, the hit of the morning seemed to be the Jelly Baby Tower! Groups were challenged to plan and build a knee height structure made out of size 5 spaghetti(any thinner and the task is impossible) and to cement it all together they had to use Bassets Jelly Babies - Soft & Chewy, for extra hold!
After lunch the scholars then come up against their hardest challenge yet; in a group of 10, which signified a rather large Filipino family they had to build a raft out of logs, rope and recycled barrels to cross the ‘Pacific Ocean’ which in this case was a lily-less lily pond. Once on the other side they would be able to harvest that day’s crop of rice and fish to help feed all 10 hungry mouths. That evening the groups then got to test their wits against each other in our Filipino Port Development Island Scenario, which momentarily undid all our team building hard work we did during the day, as stakeholders ripped into each other!
Day Two: Andark Diving and Watersports Centre
Many of the scholars were really looking forward to the Scuba Diving experience and it didn’t fail to delivery, by the end of the day we had 50 water babies. When the scholars were not in the pool diving through hoops or learning the in’s and out’s of Scuba Diving they were mentally stimulated by our CCC simulated oceanic line transect or some mind boogling brain teasers, which kept them busy and out of trouble.
At the end of the two days, came the unenviable task of selecting a final 20 from a group of 50 scholar that all impressed with their ‘never say die’ attitude and great enthusiasm. The 20 will now go on to Coral Cay Conservations new marine site in across Sogod Bay on the remote tropical Island of Panoan, Philippines!
