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Introduction

The Wallace Environmental Learning Laboratory, WELL, is part of the Wallace Education Centre in Dairy Farm Nature Park.   WELL is named after Dr Alfred Russell Wallace (1823 – 1913), an English naturalist, evolutionist, anthropologist, social critic, theorist and author of the classic travel book The Malay Archipelago.  Wallace came to Singapore on 20 April 1854 to study the island’s natural history and collect specimens. The place where he did his fieldwork was Bukit Timah Hill.

In 1929 Cold Storage acquired 60 acres of land in Bukit Timah, converted it into a dairy farm with the Friesian cows from Europe, and began production of fresh milk for the local population. It was only natural that the place be called Dairy Farm. Two Dairy Farm cowsheds have remained to this day. The area in which they lie, mostly untouched by modernization, still teems with biodiversity and possesses a heritage of national and ecological significance. These buildings have been refurbished, one of them turned into the Interpretive Centre, run by NParks, and the other into the Wallace Environmental Learning Laboratory, or WELL. WELL was officially launched by Mr Mah Bow Tan, Minister of National Development, on 5 September 2009.

Objectives Of WELL


WELL, established by Raffles Girls’ School and NParks, sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline and supported by the Economic Development Board (EDB), is the first outdoor environmental learning laboratory in Singapore. WELL is developed with the objective of promoting environmental education through fieldwork; in parallel with environmental education, many other interdisciplinary learning opportunities are also afforded through WELL, which is a one-stop learning centre for scientific research, national education, community service, teacher training and international exchange.

Partnership With Schools And Institutions

WELL is available for partner participating schools to run their own programmes.  This will provide more opportunities for RGS and partner schools to work closer together on programmes, community service or other research projects.   
WELL will also provide professional development to equip educators with competency in fieldwork, equipment handling and care for the environment.   Formal programme and curriculum development training on-site is needed to equip educators in the proper delivery of field studies and research programmes.   
Further, RGS has founded a WELL Community of Teachers (WELLCoT) and will share all training and consultancy for field studies with WELLCoT.
 
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