RIMBA The Card Game
An act of disruptive conservation
Being in the rainforest as a child was like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia. The air is thick and humid, building our excitement as we search for the cool waters of small streams and the great achievement of discovering a majestic waterfall. Every sound, from the distant calls of birds, zinging of cicadas and rustling of the layered canopy swaying above head in the breeze- was amplified.
Each trip was like a self-written adventure book, crouching to look at ants marching in a line, following the bioluminescent fireflies and digging around moist ground for fungi. Each discovery ignited our curiosity in this place of endless exploration. I felt small yet profoundly connected to this rich, breathing world around me and smaller still when at awe of inspirational documentaries with Steve Irwin, David Attenborough or Jacques Cousteau which was on national TV in the 90’s.
Unaware, I was learning so much through these scaffolded experiences of trips to coastal mangroves, hiking the mossy forest or hunting waterfalls with other families from the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS). We truly live in an amazing corner of the world. Meeting ornithologist, herpetologist, botanist and ecologist at the MNS monthly gathering, annual general meetings, and going on their field trips was so much fun and, to a certain extent, gamified.
Looking back, I recognise these experiences were a privilege; my parents were “outdoor people” in many ways. My mum came from a paddy farming family and my dad grew up around railway tracks of Sentul then later in Section 5, Petaling Jaya. They leaned into their own childhood and leveraged on the available natural spaces around our area for weekend adventures, birthday picknicks, sleep overs, and as a go to activity when our cousins from abroad came to visit- this was our normal. Later on as a young adult, I found my way into a group of young Malaysians geared on outdoor adventure and service through Raleigh International.
Here I realised my childhood was not typical, and for the most part we enjoyed the freedom of being autonomous. This group of peers are my fox hole buddies and form some of my core friendships today. They are ever ready to offer a friendly ear, share technical advice and are great at helping spread the word of my wild ideas, like the making of a local wildlife card game.
The decision to develop RIMBA The Card Game was a culmination of many idealistic and frustrated conversations which started when Lymun and I volunteered with Gerai OA, a pop up shop selling Orang Asli (OA) made crafts to supplement their income. The irony of it all lays in the fact that the OA community make utilitarian tools out of natural materials around them, which urbanites perceive as cultural artifacts and consume as crafts. This great economic opportunity for the Orang Asli is in direct conflict with urban economic development, where forests have been systematically logged and replanted with monocrops, while villages have systematically been displaced from their ancestorial lands.
It was clear to us how rural resources fed the urban demand at the cost of natural systems, biodiversity and communities. Between 2010 and 2016 we saw much land use change through our biannual craft pick-ups, as a response to this we started distributing vegetable seeds among the women and playing simple games with the young children who came to check us (the outsiders) out. We learnt very quickly that the children we were playing with barely joined their parents foraging and that the youth participated less in hunting due to the new dangers from logging activities. At best the families would go fishing nearby and worked on the narrowing acreage of their orchard and rice fields.
Somewhere along the way, Lymun and I formed Ecocentric Transitions (ET), a Social Enterprise focused on environmental and social impact. Our aim, was to simply run workshops that disrupt our own lifestyle, to transition towards a sustainable future in an ecocentric way. To enable deep transition we needed baby steps of awareness, skilled based workshops to socialise environmentally just consumer practises and raise awareness on material end of life that supports the 8Rs. The coupling of natural heritage, consumption within our planetary boundaries, and equitable social safeguards needed the support of a community of practise, which was realised through a collective we help ignite called Transition TTDI.
As an enterprise we were running various workshops and at this point realised that our simple prototype energizer about animals and vegetables were effective in corporate, community and school settings. We saw how the simple game could encourage sharing and discussion, which raised environmental empathy. We recognised how people were genuinely curious about local wildlife and had not experience being in the various forest types here in Malaysia but ironically have been on outdoor adventures abroad. We also recognised the demand in the early childhood education and neurodivergent enrichment space.
Our back burner project moved up in priority; we started to discuss different perspectives of habitat, landscapes, animal selection and reflection on the failing conservation of our local forest - in short how could we build a tribe to conserve the forest. We were aware of the unexamined assumptions of biodiversity education in Malaysia. It ranged from the challenge of inserting biodiversity content in schools by non-STEM trained teachers, the lack of understanding of current socio-economic factors that impact biodiversity, the importance of local cultural contexts, and recognising that students may have their own access and impressions of wildlife from their personal experiences making the knowledge-system dynamic.
We leveraged every resource we had from mentors in conservation, graphic designers, school teachers and work away travellers. We got burnt a few times along the way, as any projects does, but we pushed on over 3 years to get to the point of publishing in 2019. The highlight for me was honestly watching the ladies hired to sort and pack the cards in to the boxes. It was a week from the Luna New Year and the Chinese aunties who were hired to pack the cards were jolly, working over chit chat. The mandarin oranges took place in the centre of their assembly line blessing our cards as they were stacked in their colour sets, days after we checked the master print. Honestly it was just the beginning.
Today, 6 years later, with the global lock down behind us, I can honestly say it has been humbling. The 12 months we had to launch RIMBA was amazing. We ran over 200 Game Play sessions, set up Biodiversity Corners in school libraries, activated numerous conferences and trained hundreds of teachers. We were also pleasantly overwhelmed by children, parents and teachers sharing how they used RIMBA in different ways, doing a nature blitz when on holiday, with neurodivergent individuals and in drama classes. Lockdown had Hafiz, my brother, and Fatin who worked for us at the time, producing videos to reach and engage children in their homes. Our Facebook group focuses on an adult audience interested in news on global biodiversity and local wildlife.
We have learnt so much from our interactions and in truth it is where the impact of RIMBA lays. We have observed that
90% players are able to name 30 of the animals after playing just 1 game,
60% can tell you a fact after playing “Happy Family”, a set collection version of the game, and
30% of children shared they had a favourite animal which they wanted to know more about.
We have had children just read the information cards without playing and enjoy “BINGO” using the scientific name (which is not on the playing cards). Some through extended reading were able to ask descriptive questions when playing “Who Am I?” bringing more interesting and less known facts into play.
My biggest achievement from publishing RIMBA? The knowledge that RIMBA (as open ended game) lives its potential to foster critical thinking, collaborative play, motivates deeper learning, inspires inclusion, and embraces the needs of many. Today we run workshops that offer interdisciplinary learning and real world advocacy using RIMBA. We support research in the field with science communication consultation for outreach programs and biocultural mapping making me more an Environmental Social Worker instead of Sustainability Facilitator. This change in perspective spurs me to formalise our experiences as case studies for Environmental Social Governance and Impact Measurement auditing with the personal mission to push for environmental and social safeguards.