Awesome Chek Jawa Open House!

Specially for Pesta Ubin, volunteers from many groups came together to celebrate Chek Jawa Open House on 3 Jun (Sat)! FREE, no registration required, just come to Chek Jawa!

We reached out to about 700 visitors and there was even a 'dugong'! This activity is by the Chek Jawa community, led by the Naked Hermit Crabs with friends of Chek Jawa like NParks Chek Jawa volunteers, TeamSeagrass, Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M) Initiative and Toddycats.


Volunteer guides were stationed all over the boardwalk to share about Chek Jawa's amazing wildlife. The most important station is the welcome station at the Information Kiosk!

The highlight of the trip is to meet Joe Lai, the Man who Saved Chek Jawa. And his baby dugong (fibreglass model)!

Here's a video of Joe at work! My Hero!

The youngest Chek Jawa volunteer is Halley with his octopus at the station on the coastal boardwalk! Mommy November did the heavy lifting sharing about Chek Jawa's awesome rocky shores, and other ecosystems nearby.

Along the mangrove boardwalk,  hear stories about the fascinating plants growing there.

The Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative volunteers had a fascinating booth in front of the old aquaculture pond. Perfect for explaining how R.U.M. hopes to restore mangroves in Ubin's abandoned aquaculture ponds!

The awesome TeamSeagrass volunteers had a marvellous booth with all kinds of seagrass give-aways and seagrass stories!

Ubin Bird Lovers were also stationed at the top of Jejawi Tower to point out the amazing birds on the shores of Chek Jawa.

As well as the birds in the Jejawi fig growing next to the tower. The tower was purposely placed next to the fig so we can more easily see the animals that visit the gigantic tree!

Chen Xi also came up with the winning idea of providing hand-carved stamps of Chek Jawa! Kids (and the young-at-heart) got 'passports' to collect these stamps from the volunteers at their stations!

The stamps were clearly a big hit!

We also had a self-service photo booth at House No. 1. Glad that the visitors enjoyed it.

Thanks to Joe Lai for this precious photo of the Tham Pui San and other volunteer artists who created this wonderful mural more than 10 years ago!

Photo by Joe Lai.

Thanks to all the volunteers who made this happen! Here's the volunteers at the end of  the second shift.

Thanks also to NParks for providing transport for all the volunteers and for giving a shoutout to NParks volunteers about the Open House.

Protecting Chek Jawa

It remains urgent that we share with as many people as possible, the treasure that is Chek Jawa. Chek Jawa has no protected status.

The landuse plan by the Ministry of National Development shows some of the shores that may be lost by 2030. In the North, the plans include a road link (black line) from the mainland jumping off at Punggol, crossing to Pulau Ubin through Chek Jawa to jump off to Pulau Tekong before circling back to the mainland on Changi East. Proposed reclamation (in yellow) will bury Pasir Ris shores, Pulau Sekudu and Chek Jawa as well as a large amount of shore at Changi Beach. More in this blog post.

Click on images for larger view.

MORE photos of Balik Chek Jawa ...

Photos by Ria Tan on facebook.


Photos by Chen Xi on facebook.


Photos by Liz Lim on facebook


TeamSeaGrass had an awesome booth!


The volunteers also stopped by Uncle Lim's shop with Pesta Ubin activities!


Mindy Neo shared her volunteer experience at Chek Jawa.


Danny CT shares his day at Pesta Ubin.


Marcus Ng shares photos of volunteering at Chek Jawa and attending Nicky Bay's night Pesta Ubin activity too.

Photos by OS Han uploaded by MJ Mohammad.