I was 16 years old when Typhoon Haiyan (also known as Super Typhoon Yolanda), one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, destroyed my home and washed away everything I owned.
My father had been a fisherman and, in an instant, lost his entire livelihood.
Fishing was impossible as dead bodies floated in the sea for a long time afterwards. Instead we relied on relief goods and some money from my university scholarship.
The government response was shockingly inadequate.
Relocation sites lacked basic services such as water and electricity, and there were only limited opportunities for people to earn a living. As a result, many families returned to their original homes, despite these areas still being extremely dangerous.
To this day, almost six years later, half of our house is still under tarpaulin.
No one expected Haiyan to be that devastating and monstrous.
I knew I had to do something because I didn’t want my community to ever go through the same thing again, or to ever feel that sense of utter helplessness again.
The climate crisis has had a real and devastating impact on my life and that of countless others. But the pain it causes ordinary people is often missed in the technical language used by climate scientists.
After Haiyan, I founded the Youth Leaders for Environmental Action Federation.
We fight for an environmentally-oriented, sustainable, and climate change resilient community in the Eastern Philippines. We also work to raise awareness on a global stage of the current and very real impact the climate crisis is having on the lives of people in our communities.