A cleaner community starts with me
Where could one person begin if they want to spark change? For 12-year-old Christine Joy, a good place to start is at the heart of her own community. Though opportunities were often limited in their small town, her dedication and perseverance to create a cleaner and greener community was the opposite.
Growing up in the town of Oras, Eastern Samar, Christine Joy experienced many difficulties in life. For a girl like her who comes from a poor family, the opportunities are quite limited. Despite this, Christine Joy poured herself into her studies and worked hard to be a consistent achiever since her early school years.
It was this perseverance that later led her to participate in a workshop last February 2024, designed to bring out the creative potential of young people and help them produce information, education, and communication materials tackling disaster risk reduction and climate change.
Though Christine Joy was the youngest participant in her group, she confidently stepped up as their leader, initiating the exchange of ideas and leading the production of public service announcements for radio.
Planting the seeds of advocacy
“I really learned a lot in the 3-day training I attended,” she shared. “I let go of my shyness and I was able to understand what climate change is and what should be done to adapt to it, especially young people like me.”
Planting the seeds of advocacy among the participants of the training was only the beginning. After the workshop, Christine Joy started to initiate conversations on adapting to climate change, this time with her family and classmates.
“I saw a change in Christine Joy when she returned from the training,” said her grandmother, Marissa. “She immediately convinced us to do garbage segregation at home. She also said she wanted to do activities with other children so that they can teach people in our village how to avoid the severe effects of disasters.”
Putting plans into action
Aside from doing advoacy ads for the radio, Christine Joy found her voice in writing poems about the environment. In one of her poems, she wrote how “this world could be better if we help each other”. With the school break coming up in July, the young poet hopes to put her advocacy plans into action.
Before the school break began, Christine Joy managed to round up more than 30 children from her community on her own. By organising this group, she aimed to build their capacity to influence local officials to support their activities. Christine Joy was set on elevating her awareness-raising efforts not only through writing and speaking on the local radio, but also through collection of plastic waste, recycling and tree-planting.
Since then, her group, Saugan Active Children Organisation, started doing regular community clean-up drives every Saturday morning with the guidance of local officials and parents.
“I am happy to help our village [together] with my friends [and] inform people on what should be done to avoid the severe effects of climate change. This does not hinder our studies because we do it during the hours when there are no classes and no school activities,” shared Christine Joy.
Though addressing the effects of climate change is a long and systematic task, Christine Joy’s initiative is a testament to the inspiring ability of young people to spark collective action right from where they are.
Youth empowerment, Climate change, Climate change activism, girls’ leadership
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