The Return: A 2nd Chance (henceforth addressed as ‘the Return’) is a community-based marine turtle conservation project established and run by Semester 6 Persuasive Communication students of Taylor’s College Petaling Jaya. While most marine turtle conservation efforts have centered on activities conducted at and near beaches and waterfronts, The Return will focus their efforts on providing an impetus for a largely urban audience to adopt a more civic conscious behaviour in support of marine turtle conservation. Through the providing of information and those behavioural recommendations to our target audience, it is expected that it will be possible to build on and expand existing marine turtle conservation efforts.
The Return will be run by a 15-member strong team for the period 2007/2008 and is expected to be officially launched by mid-February 2008. We intend to reach out to urban populations (currently defined as college students in colleges and institutions of tertiary learning in the Klang Valley) through awareness programmes incorporating workshops, seminars and publicity events. In addition to that, complementary to our objectives, the Return also intends to enlist the cooperation of owners and/or operators of local beach front properties inclusive of but not limited to development projects and beach resorts and hotels to adopt and implement a set of sustainable operational guidelines (to be set up with the cooperation of the Malaysian Nature Society).
Concurrent with college requirements, the project will be supervised by college trainers and periodic evaluations will be conducted to assess the value of the Return on
a) Level of involvement of target audience in project initiatives
b) Viability of project recommendations for beachfront property stakeholders