I never dream of becoming a climate action advocate, it just happened!
I was a Science Teacher in the Philippines for 7 years and now moved to United States to continue reaching and advocating to a global level of my passion. It started on simple classroom-based research that focused on lack of instructional material to support environment and climate-related problems in my home country. At first, I had forty-five kids who I taught through a developed contextualized and localized approaches on climate action activities that could help them adapt on changes in the environment.
These localized and evidence-based materials and projects have been adopted by many schools to help communities and schools take actions on climate change. This approach gave students and simple people in communities the opportunity to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and values about climate change awareness, and reduce the effects of calamities through educational, agricultural, and environmental mitigation and resilience. After 5 years, now, this become a global climate advocacy which I never thought would happen, becoming a life-changing career and a volunteer work for me reaching out to government and non-government organizations worldwide working towards a sustainable Earth. Supporting climate change education and letting children educate and believe that this will serve as a way to instill environmental literacy and help the Earth a better place to live. I believed that climate action and environmental education should be a part of the school and community action because people’s active role on environmental protection establishes a foundation for their future understandings and actions as citizens of the country.
The world needs advocates of climate action to be key stewards for the environment. Nowadays, as the earth grows older, number of people increase and continue to demand for water, food, land, transport, and energy. Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature and global warming. This alarmed me that these future generation especially kids would experience these things, risking their lives that from problems and pandemics due to a changing Earth.
Now aside from being a teacher, I am working as a volunteer and global ambassador of climate action. I will continue to inspire and educate more people to be aware and protect the environment for climate justice and most importantly teach that everyone has roles as stewards of the planet and as responsible global citizens.