Sin eng-14 - stop anumal abuse

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Raffles Institution

Year 2 Research Education

Design for Change School Challenge 2011

Care for Your Animals

By Animal Protectors

Team Leader : Kennedy Oung (2I)

Team Members : Gerry Zhang (2I)

Samuel Lim (2I)

Teacher-Mentor: Mr. Jai Singh

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people and organizations that have supported us for the course of this project in one way or another.

Mr Jai Singh, whose has provided us invaluable guidance, without which we could not have accomplished this project.

Ms. Selina Sebastian, as well as all other SPCA staff, who have given us much help one way or another.

Mdm. Katherine Lee principal of Twinkle Childcare for letting us present to her children

Mdm. Lena Koh, principal of MindChamps Preschool for letting us present to her students

Mrs. Lim Yoke Tong, who has given us a golden opportunity to present to our fellow Rafflesians, and also to tell them more about stopping animal abuse.

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Table of contents

Page 4--------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 1

Page 5--------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 2

Page 6--------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 3

Page 7----------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 3 continued.

Page 8--------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 4

Page 9-----------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 4 continued

Page 10---------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 4 continued


Page 12--------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter 5






Page 18--------------------------------------------------------------------------Bibliography

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Design For Change Report

Chapter 1

We decided to take part in design for change because we have

observed that there are more and more stray cats and dogs loitering in our

neighbourhood and this compelled us to want to do something to stop this

phenomenon from aggravating. Thus, this project was the perfect projects for

us to actually do something to help. We decided to set our objectives in this

project to reduce the amount of pets being abandoned by irresponsible pet

owners, thus reducing the amount of stray cats and dogs in our community.

Thus, we did our project in collaboration with the SPCA (Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), who helped a lot in our project. We set

about achieving this goal by going around raising awareness to the public,

children and youths.

We did this by visited several childcare centres, and also made use of a

Design For Change Week program in our own school to raise awareness

about this issue to youths of our age.

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Chapter 2

We did quite a lot of research on the issue at hand after being urged by

our teacher mentor and the SPCA to find out more about this topic. The SPCA

also provided us with the statistics they had for us to read up on. Some

examples of these include the amount of pets discarded by owners in

Singapore every year, capacity of animals the SPCA can hold and amount of

animals put to sleep every year in Singapore. The problems of the increase in

the amount of stray do not just affect the animals, but they affect residents in

that area as well. According the Mrs Selina Sebastian of the SPCA, the

increase in the amount of strays can lead to an increased amount of animal

droppings, which may cause some inconvenience to the residence as they

might accidentally step into one of these faeces piles. Thus, it can be seen

that the problem is pretty severe. It has actually made the news as the

minister of health personally ordered the sterilization of a lot of stray cats. This

is to prevent them from reproducing further, causing the problem to become

worse. Thus, it can be seen that one way to approach the problem of the

increasing amount of strays is to sterilize the strays such that they cannot

reproduce. However, there is another way, which can solve the problem from

its roots. The solution that can do that is to educate the public about how to be

responsible pet owners, thus preventing them from discarding their pets.

When no one discards their pets anymore, there will be no more strays.

Furthermore, we can educate the young children about this issue so that

when they grow up, none of them will discard their pets if they decide to get

one. We arrived at this solution after speaking to Mrs. Selina Sebastian of the

SPCA, and the SPCA has such a program that does exactly that. Thus, we

did our project as a service learning project. We were also very fortunate that

all our resources that we required were not lacking, and were easily attainable.

For example, we were fortunate that some of Kennedy’s relatives owned

childcare centres, thus allowing us to get appointments easily.

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Chapter 3

The action plan of our project is to educate the young children of our

society, youths of ages similar to us teenagers, and the general public. To

accomplish this, we decided to make arrangements to visit various childcare

centres to put forth to the children information on animal abuse, and the

correct methods to properly handle animals as pets. Also, we had to prepare

posters and information cards containing information concerning pet abuse, to

utilize in our showcasing to our schoolmates, such that they are better able to

understand the information we are trying to convey.

We thus decided to separate the work amongst ourselves, some of us

getting the posters and information cards/brochures from SPCA, while the

others start on the script to present to the children in the childcare centres.

This enabled us to be able to complete the presentation preparation quickly

and efficiently. Also, to get the children’s attention, we decided to get some

small souvenirs such as cards containing information about abandoned pets

and the SPCA contact information to give to the children at the childcare

centres if they answer our question correctly after the presentation, also

enabling us to check if the children learnt anything from the presentation. By

doing so, we are taking a risk on whether the children would listen to the

presentation just to obtain the card, and forget it all later. But we believe that

the children with the cards, which contains contact information of SPCA,

would show the cards to their parents, and that their parents might even get

the information we shared to the children, thus it can be seen that the risk is

worth taking as the positive outweighs the negative effects.

This project also involves many people. Firstly, it involves the help of

Mrs Selina Sebastian, who not only provided us the materials we needed for

the presentation to the child cares we are going, such as the posters and

PowerPoint slides, but also, in supporting us in accomplishing this project.

Also, our teacher-mentor Mr Jai Singh gives us constructive and helpful

guidance and feedback such that we are able to better our project and perfect

it.

Finally, we also met up with Mrs Selina Sebastian on the other ways

we can use to bring forth the information to the children, leading us to decide

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on utilizing posters pasted on large sheets of vanguard. Then, she agreed to

provide us with the necessary posters and cards to present to people.

The poster board that we created

A picture of Ms. Selina Sebastian posing with a dog

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Chapter 4

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Days 1 to 3 were spent presenting to the Rafflesians in Raffles Institution. It

was held in the main Atrium, located in the Yusof Ishak Block. On the other

hand, Days 4, 5, 6, and 7 were spent presenting in childcares. Day 4 was

presented in Twinkle Childcare, while Days 5 to 7 were

presented in the Tampines branch of MindChamps

Preschool.

Day 1 (19th July 2011Tuseday) - Raffles Institution

Present: Gerry Zhang, Kennedy Oung

On Day 1, there were practically no participants in

our presentations. This was probably due to busy schedules, which

consequently led to the interested participants being unable to stay back and

listen to our presentations. However, we were upbeat about it, and felt that we

would get more participants on the next 2 days. We also created a

questionnaire with the rest of the school mates taking part in this Design for

Change project, to test the level of understanding in our participants.

Day 2 (20th July 2011, Wednesday) - Raffles Institution

Present: Gerry Zhang, Samuel Lim, Kennedy Oung

On Day 2, an overwhelmingly high number of participants had come to

view our presentations. We were delighted that so many people were

interested, and it was far beyond our expectations. We gave out the

questionnaires, and even gave a tube of Polo candy to those who could

answer at least 8 of them correctly, as an added bonus. We felt that the

reason for the increased participation was that Wednesday was a day where

majority of the students had to stay back for CCA (co-curricular activities), and

would be able to visit our booths. Furthermore, after seeing the crowd, as well

as the incentive of a tube Polo candy, those that may not have been

interested might have had their interests sparked.

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Day 3 (21st July 2011, Thursday)- Raffles Institution

Present: Samuel Lim, Kennedy Oung

On Day 3, the participants was lower than that of Day 2, but still much

better than that of Day 1. However, as we observed an increased number of

teachers passing by, we decided to try and convince teachers to participate in

our questionnaire challenge too. Thankfully, most of the teachers had the time

to spare to visit our booths. Thus, the bulk of our participants on Day 3 were

teachers.

Day 4 (25 July 2011, Tuesday)- Twinkle Childcare

Present: Gerry Zhang, Kennedy Oung

Students reading from posters

A student filling up the questionnaire while he looks for the answers

A high number of students on Day 2

Gerry giving out questionnaires

A picture of a completed questionnaire

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Day 4 was completed at Twinkle Childcare, where we had presented to

small group of 7 to 10 people. As Twinkle Childcare did not possess a

projector, we could only present it with the poster we had used in the

Exhibition Week. The children were quite rowdy, and we had a hard time

trying to control them. However, this problem was solved with us offering

incentives, to coax them to focus. The children, being of a younger age, had a

relatively short attention span, and could not sit still. Furthermore, the children

had difficulty understanding some of the vocabulary that we had used. As

such, we could only try to use analogies, as well explaining it in simple terms,

to get our message across. A minor setback was that we were struggling to

try and come up with analogies and simpler explanations, which caused mild

stuttering, as well as time constraints. While presenting in the childcare, we

came upon astonishing pieces of news. The children were animal abusers.

Some of these children had been making a habit of kicking stray animals,

especially cats, whenever they chanced upon them, and causing them harm.

We were surprised, as we expected the younger generation to be less

inclined to come into contact with stray animals, much less resort to violence.

This was taken into serious consideration, and we immediately told them that

kicking the animals is an act of pet abuse, and that they should not do it. The

principal of the childcare, Mdm. Katherine Lee, was also informed of this.

Action has already been taken prior to this issue.

Day 5,6,7( 2nd August)- MindChamps Preschool@ Tampines

Present: Samuel Lim, Kennedy Oung

Children receiving the small information cards

Children listening attentively

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Days 5, 6, and 7 were all done on the same day, and as such will be

described together. These Days were spent at MindChamps Preschool at

Tampines, and our target audience this time was 3 classes of children with

different ages. As the preschool had a portable projector available, we could

use our PowerPoint slides to present to the children. This time, the children

were more focused, and quieter as compared to the 4th Day, probably

because of the presence of teachers, as well as having PowerPoint slides

both filled with colourful pictures, and with simple words to entertain them.

These PowerPoint slides were prepared by the SPCA, who have had more

experience presenting to children, and is thus more ‘child- friendly’. The

presentation had gone smoothly, with minor hitches such as children playing

with the wire, but generally quite successful. Many children reared pets at

home, and loved to learn more about taking care of pets. As far as we could

tell, the children did not abuse animals, and were responsible pet owners. It

was good news to us, as we were afraid that this group of children may be pet

abusers as well.

Chapter 5

Reflections

Kennedy presenting to the children at MindChamps Preschool

MindChamps @ Tampines

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We have managed to successfully educate the youths, as well as

children about taking proper care of their pets, as well as about the harmful

effects of abusing animals. Furthermore, we have managed to find potential

animal abusers (Day 4, Twinkle Childcare), and told them about how it was

wrong to do such things. Thus, we consider most of our objectives met.

However, we did not manage to present to the target number of audiences—

this was the only objective we did not meet. This was probably because we

expected more audiences on Days 1 and 4.

We feel that this project had been a fruitful, fun, yet memorable

experience, in which we have learnt a great amount of things. From this

experience, not only have we learnt to communicate with kids better, we have

also established a relationship with some of the staff from SPCA. These ties

may prove to be useful and reliable in the long run.

In the past, we would be unable to give our best in doing a project that

would require much time and energy. However, through this project, we have

learnt to persevere, and that we can make a difference in the world.

We feel that we are able to persevere in our project. This has enabled

us to keep on going, even in the face of adversity. However, we tend to get

distracted easily, an example being us forgetting to work on the RE project

when we have other projects to work on. Another weakness would be our flaw

of procrastination. We often leave many of our tasks to be completed in the

eleventh hour. This has caused much trouble for those around us, such as

having to return the posters to the SPCA on time.

One of the challenges that we have faced include us being unable to

meet up on the holidays to complete this project. This is partly because of our

hectic schedules, as well as the our habit to procrastinate, as mentioned

above. Also, it was difficult to find suitable childcare centers. These centers

needed to be able to accommodate us at a time where we are free. This is

difficult as we do not have our weekends free, and can only go there after

school.

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Thus, we feel that we should work on rectify those problems listed

above. We should try to work on our outstanding tasks while we still have the

time, and organize our schedule better.

Reflections (Gerry)

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This project has taught me a lot of things about myself, that I have the

power to make the change I want to have in the world and can show

compassion to not just humans, but likewise animals. My life is considerable

more comfortable than these stray animals that have to forage for scraps for

their food. Thus, I need to be humble and show compassion to these poor

animals. Thus, I believe that I have learnt much from this experience of

working with the SPCA, and I would definitely treat animals that I see better.

However, I think that I may not be a very good social worker or volunteer

since my school life is very hectic and this would cause me to be unable to

find much time for volunteering work.

I believe, that through this project I have made a impact, however small, to

the society as I have taken a step to solve a problem that would soon become

a nuisance. After working on these project, I found that my initial thinking that

the stray cats and dogs were not a problem to society was flawed, thus

prompting me to solve this issue such that it will not trouble people in the

community anymore. As can be seen from the fact that it made the news, it is

a huge problem indeed.

In the future, I believe that I can continue to work with the SPCA to tackle

this problem and hopefully, solve it once and for all. It will have a great social

impact since people need not worry about the animal droppings anymore.

Furthermore, it has a political impact, since the minister can devote his time

on other more pressing issues. The economic impact is that SPCA will not

need to spend more money in getting more land to house these stray animals.

However, these problem will not be easily solved. Although we reach out to

people to educate them to be responsible pet owners, they might not listen to

us, or take our advice as a grain of salt. Thus, we have to find ways to break

through these mental barriers to effectively curb the problem at hand. If

possible, I would like the government to get professional pet handlers or

trainers to hold talks and workshops to educate the public about responsible

pet ownership. People will take professionals more seriously, and these might

help break through some of the mindsets I mentioned earlier. Hopefully, these

solutions will be implemented in the near future so as to help solve the

problem.

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In conclusion, I have enjoyed myself thoroughly after working on this

project. While enriching myself with new knowledge, I have also received an

opportunity to work with a non-profit organization, the SPCA. Thus, I want to

thank my teacher mentor, my group mates and everyone that has helped or

encouraged me in one way or another.

Reflections (Samuel Lim)

In this past year doing this research education project, I believe I have

learnt many things about myself, and ways I can improve further. Firstly, I

know that I can change something, i can make the change in the world I live in,

and all these are possible if I am persevering enough. Perseverance, a virtue

needed in almost any situations, is one I believe I lack in, due to my knack to

get distracted very easily, and thus this is an important aspect this research

education project has helped me understand better. Also, I feel that all of us

have the capacity to be compassionate, be it to humans or animals, and it

only depends on whether we want to or not. This I largely due to that fact that

these abused and stray animals are living in a life a whole lot worse than ours,

and that through this project, I feel the need to help these animals, give them

a better life. Working with SPCA has taught me a great deal of things,

including the aforementioned ones, and it is truly a wonderful experience

working with SPCA. While I do believe that I can contribute to the society as a

social worker, the heavy workload, and stress prevents me from picking up

the habit of volunteerism, but I will still strive to help as much as I could.

I feel that although I am but one person, by doing this project with my

group mates, we are able to spread the word around, influencing more and

more people, and this small change will spark a change in the mindset of our

current society that pet abuse is tolerated, and that stray animals should not

be treated as part of our society and not given helped. I also once felt that

way too about these aspects on pet abuse and stray animals, but with this

project, it gave me a different insight into the matter, that these animals

should actually be saved, and helped. I believe that through our presentations,

we have given others the insight they need into changing their views in these

matters, and with this, it is like a chain reaction, influence one, and a group

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will be influenced.

I believe that I would want to work with SPCA in the future, to tackle and

solve this problem once and for all, and this would have a great impact on the

lives of us humans, and animals alike. Socially, we are able to have a cleaner

environment to live in as there are no more stray animals that may dirty our

environment. Also, in the political sense, our government would be able to

devote their time to focus more on other aspects of our society, while

economically; there is less need for animal welfare companies to spend too

much money on building places for these animals to stay in. These impacts

however can only work if animal owners and people in our society are willing

to cooperate with us in solving this issue. This can be tackled by implementing

fines to people who are caught abandoning their animals into the wild, and

also to invite renowned motivation speakers or people from animal welfare

groups, as these stubborn people may only learn, when being spoken to by

professionals.

Altogether, I feel that this research education project is truly a great and

wonderful experience for me, and I also feel that working with SPCA, my

group mates and my teacher-mentor has truly made the experience fun and

unforgettable. i thank everyone that has helped in this project one way or

another, for making this project worthwhile and really, the best.

Reflections (Kennedy Oung)

After working on this SL project, I have found out that I am able to lead

fairly well, considering that I have little to no experience in being a team

leader. Even though I love animals, I rarely come into contact with them.

Perhaps this has caused me to cherish animals more than others, who

have had reared pets before, and thus do not cherish animals more than I

do. After this experience, I will view animal abuse in a more serious light. I

will strongly object to animal abuse, and will not let such an act go by

without justice being done. I feel that my busy schedule is stopping me

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from picking up volunteerism. It is already difficult enough to juggle school

and tuition at the same time. Adding voluntary work would be much too

stressful for me to handle. However, I do feel that I will become a good

social service worker. I try my best in whatever I do, and I will make sure

to take part in voluntary work if I can be in time for it.

I have made an effort in stopping pet abuse, as well as promoting

responsible pet ownership. It may be small, but I believe that it will

eventually build into something significant. In the past, I felt that

responsible pet ownership just meant giving it exercise, as well as keeping

it clean. However, now I have learnt that it is much more than that. It

includes watching its diet, buying appropriate enclosures, items, etc. I feel

that through passing on this knowledge, it has the potential to end animal

abuse, as well as the abundance of stray animals.

I can start volunteering at the SPCA (if I am of age), or I may

seek guidance from different pet care organizations to start presenting to a

larger scope of audience, and I may even reach the media. However, to do

so, I will require the support from the community, as well as the

opportunity to present to large groups of audiences. Should such an

opportunity arise, I shall take it. This may implicate the use of animals in

circuses and theme parks worldwide, as many of these animals go through

inhumane training to be able to perform circus tricks. We may petition to

save these animals from cruelty of the trainers, and can send it to the

circuses or theme parks (such as the theme park at Marina Bay Sands) to

request for them to stop using animals in their performances.

Bibliography

MindChamps, PreSchool. (Date unclear). MindChamps preschool centres. Retrieved from

http://www.mindchamps.org/preschool/centres-popup.html

http://www.mindchamps.org/preschool/centres-popup.html

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Selina, Sebastian. (Date unclear). Selina Sebastian, Facebook. Retrieved from

http://www.facebook.com/people/Selina-Sebastian/508719249

http://www.facebook.com/people/Selina-Sebastian/508719249

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Sin eng-14 - stop anumal abuse