By: Pratama Aditya (Panda Mobile Coordinator)

On Sunday (20/08), AIESEC President University together with Panda Mobile WWF-Indonesia ended a series of activities on Tidung Island, Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta, by conducting beach cleanup and mangrove planting. The activity was carried out with participants of the 2017 Maritime Youth Jamboree and attended by the Regent of Thousand Islands, Irmansyah.

In his speech, Irmansyah explained about the existence of the Thousand Islands that must be preserved, especially Tidung Island which is one of the main attractions of the tourism sector. He urged the community around Tidung Island to remind the tourists who visit to maintain the sustainability and cleanliness of one of the islands with a population of approximately 5,000 people.

The participants took large bags to be used in collecting garbage. They searched the shoreline first. A lot of non-organic waste was found and the waste was thought to have been there for a long time. In fact, there were some participants who dug and found a lot of garbage buried inside. The participants managed to collect a lot of waste and filled almost all of the large plastic bags that they brought with them.

The beach cleanup was followed by mangrove planting located in front of SMKN 61. One of the local service tribes explained about the importance of mangroves and how to plant mangroves properly. The Regent of Seribu Islands was the first person to plant mangroves. Then the other participants from AIESEC and Pemuda Bahari 2017 took turns planting and taking photos together.

One of the Bahari Youth members, Muhammad Ilham expressed his opinion about the beach cleanup and mangrove planting activity, "Hopefully, what we do can be replicated by the community. Hopefully, the mangroves will last a long time and trigger people to plant mangroves too."