Working, working

I've realised that my entries on this blog make me look like I'm always off having a holiday somewhere. Which isn't entirely true, I do work sometimes! One of the activities I've been working on is producing teachers' manuals on climate change and on mangrove forests. The climate change manual is finished now and we've held two workshops to introduce the topic to local teachers. The manual is available here on the project website. The manual on mangroves is nearly finished and we will be holding a workshop for it on the 6th April. We'll also be holding a ceremony during the workshop where we hand over 1,600 copies of the climate change manual to the Soc Trang Department of Education and Training. It will be pretty exciting, the local media have been invited!

We have also finished editing the proceedings of the National Co-management Workshop which we held here in Soc Trang last year. The proceedings is also available on the project website. Editing the proceedings was a lot of work and, while I edited all the reports, Dan did the bulk of the editing and formatting. He is very glad that it is now finished!

I've also had the opportunity to be a bit creative and design some posters and do some illustrations for the project. A couple of examples are below:

This is a drawing I did for an environmental awareness raising poster. The colours, the patterns....so very Vietnamese! (That was the idea anyway!)

This is a food web which I illustrated. I've never had to draw shellfish and fish before. Do you know how hard it is to draw a prawn? It's incredibly hard! And don't ask me what that thing on the left of the prawn is meant to be, some kind of shellfish. And the thing on the right of the prawn? Ummm, a goby fish?

Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with how the shark turned out. It's a pretty cool-looking shark, right?

And can I just add that this is the grumpiest-looking fish I have ever seen.

Finally, this is one of the pages from the children's environmental colouring-in and activity book which I wrote and illustrated. The aim of the book is to encourage kids to reduce, re-use and recycle garbage and to raise awareness about climate change and the importance of mangrove forests. This colouring-in page is all about recycling.