Being handed rubber gloves and a plastic bag is not exactly what you expect when you check in to a luxury beach resort. Throw in 50 school children, and you can bid farewell to fantasies of a relaxing weekend.  Yet as I helped the local children from Tioman Island scour for rubbish on Saturday afternoon, I found myself with an unaccountably warm feeling – and it wasn’t because of the boiling hot weather.

Time Out KL had been invited to attend the bi-annual Tioman Island Clean Up Day organised by Berjaya Hotels and Resorts, working alongside children aged 11-12 from the local Tekek School to collect rubbish. As the kids descended on the beach, tourists must have been bemused to see such  enthusiastic wildlife sifting through the sand and grass. 

The children approached the rubbish collection with all the excitement of a treasure hunt – one girl holding up a pair of old trousers like she’d hit on gold. Their enthusiasm was infectious. By the end of the afternoon, we had collected 18 sacks of rubbish in total. As well as the old trousers, we found scraps of paper, food wrappers and plastic bottles. Some of the bottles had drifted up from as far as Thailand.

Tioman is one of Malaysia’s most beautiful islands, famously used as the filming location in the 1958 film ‘South Pacific’. The whole island is a marine park, with coral life that attracts scuba divers and snorkelers from around the world. However, as more and more hotels open to cater to tourists, the island’s natural ecosystem is inevitably disturbed.

Berjaya’s bi-annual Tioman Island Clean Up Day initiative is an attempt to counteract these effects, emphasising the importance of educating the next generation about the environment. As well as picking up litter, children from Tekek School took part in an art workshop led by Stephen Ronee Lau from Learning From Nature, where they sculpted and painted animals native to the island.

Tioman is home to many rare species of animal, including the green turtle, monitor lizard and frigatebird. However, I enjoyed my encounter with the pre-teen mammals I worked with most of all. Not only did they throw themselves into the experience with heartwarming enthusiasm, they did it while belting out the latest hits from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. A rare species indeed.