Unimeowlaya's First Event
Registration
The registration booth was placed outside Dewan Semuhsin Gemilang, the assembly hall used to conduct the event. Some classes and students did walk-in registrations. Hence, we requested the teachers to compile a list of unregistered students for e-cert purposes. The original number of students attending the educational talk was 243 students. However, a high interest in the project resulted in the request from the Vice Principal of Co-Curriculum to accept an additional three classes of students with a total of 100 students. Thus, 343 students attended the educational speeches in both morning and afternoon sessions.
Storytelling of Fraulein
For the event's opening ceremony, Vice Project Manager Adelia Binti Khalid began with a short storytelling session about Fraulein’s tale, a stray cat included in the book. She had a lively tone while narrating the story and managed to enliven the crowd. Fraulein was also introduced to the public while displaying the pages of the e-book through the projector. The students were excited and welcoming toward Fraulein as they enjoyed her presence. A few students even asked permission to pet her, demonstrating how they can care for animals gently. Hence, we successfully attracted their attention to the rest of the program.
Opening Speech
Vice Project Manager Marc Vernon Bligh led the event with a temporarily elected event manager, Claveron Ronan Ho. The speech began with an acknowledgement of the teachers and participants with a remark on the Vice Project Manager being alumni of the school. It was intended to create a connection to enable the students to relate to the project on a personal level. The comments on Fraulein and her story originating from the school further accentuate this. The speech continued with the information on the Unimeowlaya: Stray Stories, such as the objectives and efforts to achieve these objectives through the e-book. The opening speech then concluded with a transition to invite a representative from the Book Team to notify the participants about the e-book with the experiences and challenges associated with it. Hence, the students paid attention to the Vice Project Manager as they were interested in the project and our cause, allowing the following section to proceed smoothly.
Speech by Book Team Representative
Unimeowlaya: Stray Stories' Book Team representative and Main Illustrator, Muhammad Alyyel Kadzim Bin Zunnurain, shared a preview of the e-book to promote our project and its objectives. First, he shared his journey to completing the book, motivating students to be hardworking and to chase after their ambition by using his love for drawing as an inspiration. The speech also contained interactive questions to attract the audience, such as inquiring about their interest in drawing. Overall, Alyyel gave a very encouraging and hopeful talk to the students while representing the Book Team to showcase the e-book he was extremely proud of. He related his skill as an illustrator, saying that nothing is impossible and hard work matters the most, whether one has talent or not.
The Pawserby Session
One of our collaborators, The Pawserby, has offered to attend the event by sending their co-founder and veterinarian, Dr. Melissa, as a representative. She utilised the projector provided by the school to accompany her speech with slides.
She touched on the history and activity of The Pawserby, such as educational content via TikTok, a social media platform. Next, she held an interactive question with MCQ, with no right or wrong answers as it depends on personal values. It intended to garner attention from the students to continue paying attention to her talk. After that, she highlighted the issue with animal shelters in Malaysia, which are packed and unable to foster stray animals. Taking care and adopting animals may not be able to curb the overpopulation of strays because there is no neutering, allowing healthier animals with better fertility to contribute to the increasing population of strays. Furthermore, she spoke about responsible feeding and the jargon for neutering; spaying for female animals and castrating for males. The benefits of neutering strays were discussed in her educational talk, including the TNRM (Trap, Neuter, Return, Manage) philosophy. There, she introduced the universal “ear-tipped” sign that determines if a stray is neutered and vaccinated.
In conclusion, Dr. Melissa advocates the practice of TNRM Philosophy which anyone and not just NGOs can initiate, thus motivating the students and teachers of SMK Engku Husain to be more initiative in reducing the number of strays. Not only do they learn the benefits of neutering stray animals, but the students will also learn to become more empathetic towards strays and rescued animals. Hence, the next time they come across strays, or even pets of their own, they will consider the option of neutering to allow efficient effort to curb the overpopulation of strays.
For the last session of the event, students were permitted to ask or answer questions related to the content of Dr. Melissa’s speech. Students that took the initiative to ask questions or managed to answer the questions received stickers of the illustrated animals in the e-book as a freebie.
During the morning session, seven students asked questions regarding the cost of neutering, the failure of neutering surgery, unique genetic features of pets, steps of rescuing injured strays, and more. Meanwhile, during the afternoon session, three students asked questions regarding caring for stray and rescued animals. Many other students were eager to learn more about strays and approached Dr. Melissa after her session.
Overall, students were eager to ask questions and answer. They were pleased with the stickers freebie. The student's active participation showed their interest in strays, as they were able to answer the quiz questions accurately. Therefore, they paid attention to the talk and gained valuable knowledge. We achieved the goals and objectives of the project as it depended on our team’s and Dr. Melissa’s ability to draw the students’ focus to our efforts in raising awareness about strays.
Q&A and Quiz Session
Closing Ceremony
After completing the afternoon session of the educational talk, a certificate of appreciation from Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Art and Social Sciences was awarded to the school and principal. In return, we received a plaque from the principal.
Overall, our event went smoothly. We managed to draw the students’ focus as many actively participated in the quiz and QnA session. In addition, one of the teachers approached us after the afternoon session, expressing her gratitude for our efforts in organising this beneficial talk, especially because the students were very engaged and paid attention when we educated them on the care and neutering of stray animals. Hence, she emphasised that this signified a positive leap for the school and students' future. In short, our event was a definite success because we achieved our objective to spread awareness of strays and promote empathy for them.
Booth Activity
During recess (9:30 A.M. and 2:55 P.M.), a booth was set up on the school’s compound, Dataran Semuhsin Ukhwah, to promote the project to the students and teachers of SMK Engku Husain. In the booth, we displayed a copy of our e-book in a form of a booklet. A poster that detailed the booth activities, and the importance of caring for and neutering strays, cat memes, and origami to attract the students were also displayed at the booth. The purpose of this was for both the students who attended the educational talk and other students that did not have the opportunity to participate in the event.
