Supervisor: Ms Chang Yueh Siang
What is your team’s project about?
Our group is working with a fishing unit in Sungai Batu (south of Penang) which is affected by the Silicon Island land reclamation project, in conjunction with an environmental NGO, JEDI. Our project seeks to address the potential erasure of the Penang coastal fishermen’s cultural heritage from land reclamation, as well as counter negative stereotypes of the fishermen, through documentation of their fishing practices and culture.
What does your team enjoy most about the IEx project?
I think the most eye-opening experience for most of us was being able to go out to sea with the fishermen, allowing us to experience and understand the process of them going out to fish, and at the same time, also witness first-hand some of the challenges that they are facing today. In terms of enjoyable experiences, I would say that we enjoyed the time spent with one another. One advantage of Penang is that the city area is not too far away, so even during the project itself, we were able to still engage in some recreational activities and enjoy Penang food, together with the volunteer translators helping us.
What are some challenges that you think are unique to the project?
One of the challenges we initially faced with our project was how overtly political the issue could be. For example, we made our first recce trip in August 2023, in the middle of the Penang state elections. The land reclamation was one of the campaigning issues, and we were invited by the fishermen to observe a press conference that they organised, in which they stated their demands to the political parties. We even met a CNA reporter there! With this backdrop in mind, I think one of the issues we had to consider was to strike a balance between advocating for the fishermen while also being careful to not come across of overtly political.
Any specific tips about working with your team’s community?
(Caveat: I'm not too sure if future projects will work with the same community) Having team members who can speak Malay is an advantage to bond more easily with the community. Also, it would be good to be mindful of whether you are imposing too much on the community; for example, avoid asking similar questions across different trips (in our context, we were trying to document some of their practices).
Any fun stories to share with your juniors?
We once had a 9 am flight out of Singapore, but one of our group members stayed in Johor Bahru, so had to cross the border just to fly to Penang. Unfortunately there was a jam on the Causeway, and let's just say that I learnt for the first time that the airline has a counter specially to deal with people who arrive past the check-in time... thankfully we still made it!