All posts filed under: Blog

#MyCheveningJourney: Applying, getting accepted, and living the Chevening dream

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I realized the Chevening application for 2019-2020 is going to open again soon, and it has reminded me of the long (but very much worth it) road it took for me to get to live my Chevening dream. I’ve always wanted to pursue further studies abroad but haven’t thought about the United Kingdom until around 2014. I always had my eyes on the United States — Columbia University and Brown University to be exact. I also thought of applying for the Australia Awards scholarship. But in those years, I never finished my applications and realized I probably wasn’t ready to pursue a masters degree and live abroad. In 2014, I learned of Chevening through friends who have been accepted in the scholarship programme. I researched about it, and thought to myself that this was the scholarship I was looking for. However, I looked at their roster of scholars and got really scared. Back then, Chevening only accepted 8-10 scholars per year, all of whom were known to have contributed a lot to their field — …

Festival Lampa 2018

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I was invited to be part of Festival Lampa 2018 in Cesis, Latvia. The climate change stage was organised by Riga Technical University and Climate KIC-Latvia. I did my talk alongside Latvian journalists Sandra Kropa and Julius Sleiers and Canadian-Dutch journalist Bernice Notenboom. Most of my lecture was about evidence-based communication, and how facts don’t change people’s minds. Effective climate communication is touching o what is important for people, in different contexts, in different cultures.  It is also important that journalists are responsible in their reporting, which means taking the time to learn the science and its complexities. Here are some of my slides: The fun part was where we had our talk. It was in this amazing treehouse built especially for the event! The park also has a castle and the whole event was open to the public for free. On the other hand, the facilitation of the panel discussion could have been better. The facilitator kept coming back to questioning of climate change was man made, if we have the evidence for it. …

Climate Tracker, 3.5 years after

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It’s official, today marks my last day working with Climate Tracker. It’s been one of the most exciting, fulfilling things I’ve done in the last three and a half years and has certainly opened a lot of doors and opportunities for me. Thanks to Josh and Chris who saw my potential three and a half years ago, when I had no idea how crazy it is to be working in the climate space. In 2015, I applied for the Climate Tracker fellowship (then called Adopt A Negotiator) to go to the COP 21 in Paris. That year, I published my very first article on climate change at GMA News Online, “Why PNoy should prioritize climate change before his term ends.” After that, I couldn’t stop writing! I’ve published countless articles that year and my favourite one was this story on the plight of the people of Bataan against coal-fired power plants and this story on why climate change is a matter of human rights. In September 2015, I was able to join the team with …

#CCLS2018 Panel: Climate Change is Now

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Last March 15, I went back to Cambridge to join a panel discussion with Sir David King, Lisa Walker of Ecosphere+, and David Morton. We each presented different takes on what is happening to the climate and what solutions are being taken today. I talked about current climate change impacts, current solutions, and current youth movements around the world trying to disrupt the system and create change. I talked about how important climate change communication is, especially for changing narratives and making climate change issues better to the public. Here is my last slide: Here are some photos from the panel:   And here is the live stream video for everyone to watch:

My Lecture at Cambridge University: Engaging Youth in Climate Change through Journalism

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Last February 22, I gave a lecture at the Cambridge University for the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series 2018. In behalf of Climate Tracker, I gave a 40-minute lecture on how to engage youth in climate change through journalism, followed by a very engaging open forum. It was also streamed live on Facebook and was screened in different countries like India, Paraguay, Nepal, and the Philippines. Watch the whole lecture here: