Balik Kampung and RUMblings in January and February!

The R.U.M. team started off the new year with a blast! With the Lepak in SG workshop in January, to the scientific workshop at the start of February with mangrove expert Mr Ben Brown, and even Balik Kampung with Minister Desmond Lee last Saturday!

Thanks to NParks, Lepak in SG, the R.U.M. team, Mr Ben Brown and everyone else who supported the workshops and Balik Kampung for the great start to the year!


For starters, here’s what went down at Balik Kampung (23 Feb’18)!

Balik Kampung was organised by the  “Kawan Ubin” initiative, led by the Singapore Heritage Society as part of the Friends of Ubin Network. It brought together current and former Ubin residents, including family members in Singapore to reconnect with each other. Minister Desmond Lee graced the event. The R.U.M. team supported the event as volunteers!

The R.U.M. team helped out by organising a photo booth.

The guests had lots of fun at the booth!

Our wonderful emcees for the night – Nora and Steven with some special Ubin residents!

Besides the photo booth there were exhibitions set up by the NUS Architecture students as well as the SHS and NParks. The NUS Architecture students proudly showing off their exhibits!

A model of the restoration of Ah Ma’s drink stall and a information board!

Residents looking at the map of Ubin and tagging the places which have meaning to them!

The highlight of the evening: Minister Desmond joins the party!

Mass photo taking session with Minister!

Of course, dinner was provided too! What a sumptuous spread!

Minister Desmond went around and gave out oranges to the Ubin residents!

Oranges are a sign of prosperity and seeing as it’s still Chinese New Year, we couldn’t miss out the Lo Hei!

Here’s a shot of Minister catching up with the R.U.M. team too!

There was also a documentary screening at the event as well. As the night progressed, everyone had good conversations and had fun visiting the interactive exhibitions and the photo booth!

Once all the residents had gone home, the volunteers helped to swiftly clean up the area, and the volunteers too had lo hei!

A big thank you to all the volunteers for helping out and ensuring that Balik Kampung ran smoothly, and a big thank you to Jing Rou and Phillip Lim for organising the event! Balik Kampung was a huge success, once again, a huge thank you for everyone’s time and effort! Thank you to Ria and MJ for the pictures too!

So here’s what R.U.M. has been up to in January and February! We focused mainly on the mangrove restoration design these 2 months and we even got the views of the villagers and fishermen which is super exciting! Of course, we also consolidated some of your views in the meantime, and our online survey is still up and running for anyone else who wants to contribute ideas! All are welcome and a big thank you to those who have done the survey already, all your views matter!

January shenanigans: 

20 Jan 18:  We had the Mangroovy Mangroves workshop with Lepak in SG, in which we had more than 20 participants come and share their views on restoration design!

February happenings: 

1-2 Feb 18: Moving on to February, we had mangrove expert Mr Ben Brown, founder of Blue Forests, come and aid us in our 2-day scientific workshop for restoration design and teach us all more about Ecological Mangrove Restoration (EMR)!

More on Day 1 and Day 2 in the links!

3 Feb 18: Mr Ben Brown also gave a talk at Sungei Buloh on EMR to more than 30 enthusiastic participants who want to learn more about mangroves! It also happened to be World Wetlands' Day, so there was tons of activities to do at all the parks!

Moving forward, the R.U.M. team is still looking into what YOU want to see in Ubin’s restored mangroves, so do fill up the survey to let us know your views!

Photo credits: Ria Tan and MJ Mohammad