I've been connected to nature since I was a kid. I remember when I used to play squirrel in the schoolyard, went to survival learning camp in 3rd grade, and was laughed at when I walked home from school because I used a bag recycled from rice sacks.

These memories gathered together and unconsciously managed to nurture my love for environmental activities and issues. Nature activities seemed to be the north magnetic pole that attracted me, the south magnetic pole, to learn and get to know myself deeply and completely. That's why Forest Conservation at IPB became my main major. Unfortunately, even after taking UTBK twice, I failed to qualify as a student in this department.

On the other hand, my love for writing made me more or less forget this dream of mine, I was immersed in journalism lectures that were no less fun. But no matter what, my interest in studying nature conservation has become a part of me. This is what made me follow the Instagram of several NGOs that focus on environmental issues, one of which is WWF -Indonesia.

A post about the open recruitment of the Panda Mobile Batch 3 team landed on my Instagram timeline. Rarely holding small children or playing the role of an educator, not a person who is used to public speaking, and not having an educational background in the discipline of environmental science, I felt that I was not the person with the right qualifications to be a conservation education facilitator. However, my interest and eagerness to learn more led me to apply, attend the interview, and finally pass.

Seeing my name listed among 34 other children who were also accepted was very exciting. As a briefing, we as new volunteers received a super insightful and fun two-day training to prepare us for our field work.

On the first day, the previous batch of volunteers and Ms. Dwi welcomed us by doing morning exercises and ice-breaking. After that, Mba Dwi gave an overview of one of WWF-Indonesia's current program focuses, namely Plastic Smart Cities. Plastic Smart Cities, which is also the focus of Panda Mobile activities, aims to invite people to reduce the use of plastic, especially in several big cities. Through this program, it is hoped that the amount of plastic waste that reaches the river and sea can be minimized. Therefore, this program focuses on 3 big cities there are Jakarta, Depok, and Bogor which are passed by the flow of the Ciliwung River.

As a provision to become facilitators, we were then invited by Uncle Gerry, a storyteller to imagine and understand the basic concepts of public speaking and storytelling. Uncle Gerry invited us to learn how to recognize the audience, attract the audience's attention, and teach us what techniques we should master to convey and influence the recipient of the message well.

Since the Panda Mobile team will be dealing with children more often, we were allowed to attend a session from Mindtastic. Kak Nisa and Kak Anin as facilitators from Mindtastic, who had been young teachers, invited us to discuss how the figure of a teacher is coveted by students, and how the figure of a teacher is not expected. In the session, Kak Nisa also explained about the amygdala that can affect children's learning process, and different children's memorizing techniques, and gave many suggestions on how we should give instructions to children so that they can stay focused and capture the information conveyed completely.

After that, we had a presentation session on the results of the discussion on the first day. However, it was not just an ordinary presentation, we were asked to implement the knowledge about public speaking, storytelling, and approaching children that we had learned over the past two days. If I'm being honest, my energy was drained during the presentation session. It felt super exhausting when I had to tell a story with various voice intonations and then think quickly about the storyline to be delivered. However, naturally the learning process, although the results have not been maximized, I try to train this presentation skill from the knowledge that the mentors have conveyed.

On the second day, we were also introduced to the various tools used by the Panda Mobile team to conduct conservation education, including a toy like Cranklek and a board game called Plastic Ranger. The event was then closed with a sharing session from the previous batch of Panda Mobile volunteers.

As Pandji said, I believe that dreams or interests cannot be killed. Perhaps my interest in environmental issues was not learned in formal schooling. But, many roads lead to Rome. One of how I can learn more about this issue is to be part of Panda Mobile.

Hopefully, here, I can develop my communication skills with others so that I can not only convey messages but also influence other people's decisions to create collective awareness about the importance of protecting the environment.