Balik Chek Jawa 2018

Specially for Pesta Ubin, volunteers from many groups came together to celebrate Chek Jawa Open House on 10 Jun (Sun)! FREE, no registration required, just come to Chek Jawa!

We reached out to about 800 visitors! This activity is by the Chek Jawa community, led by the Naked Hermit Crabs with friends of Chek Jawa like TeamSeagrass, Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M) Initiative and Lepak in SG, with support from the Raffles Ecological Literacy Programme.


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 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.

The next youngest volunteers were Olivia's daughters who did an awesome job sharing about Chek Jawa's amazing animals! Like the mud lobster.

And the sand bubbler crabs.

Along the mangrove boardwalk, hear stories about the fascinating plants growing there. Nipah palms are the source of attap chee and Ivan had a tub of actual attap chee to offer visitors to sample.

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!

At five stations, we gave out sets of 17 children's books written specially for Singapore's kids about Singapore's wildlife by students of the Raffles Ecological Literacy Programme.

At House No. 1, we were thrilled that kids gladly shared their thoughts with us.

These were displayed outdoors!

The kids really showed awareness of the issues and their love for Chek Jawa and our environment.

We are so touched by the kids who thanked us.

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 Joseph Lai

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

Here's a brief video clip of the highlights of Balik Chek Jawa 2018.

Our Balik Chek Jawa 2018 poster!

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.

MORE photos of Balik Chek Jawa ...