Guimaras youth awarded Bow Seat environmental fellowship

Rodmar Gaitan Arduo of Guimaras has received a USD 2,500 grant from Bow Seat: Creative Action for Conservation (Bow Seat), an international nonprofit organization that engages youth in environmental conservation and advocacy through the creative arts.

The grant is part of Bow Seat’s True Blue Fellowship Program, a by-youth, for-youth initiative created by Bow Seat’s youth leadership council that provides funding and mentorship to young people ages 13–24 worldwide who are addressing ocean, waterway and/or climate change challenges in their local communities through a creative arts lens.

The funding, peer support and capacity-building programs will support Arduo’s project, “Sugid Dagat: CurrentShift Commservation Workshop,” which aims to help coastal youth in Guimaras transform climate anxiety and experiences with marine litter into creative agency and ocean stewardship.

Arduo plans to conduct a series of workshops, public exhibitions and book development to amplify youth voices, raise awareness of threats to the Guimaras Strait and foster a generation of young people who see themselves as capable advocates and stewards shaping their community’s sustainable future.

“Bow Seat’s youth leadership council created the Fellowship Program with the goal of empowering their peers to advocate for our environment and for our collective futures,” said Linda Cabot, founder and president of Bow Seat.

“We are thrilled to welcome Rodmar as a 2026 True Blue Fellow. He is among 12 other Fellowship recipients from around the world who are committed to and passionate about taking action to protect our blue planet, and we look forward to working with these inspiring young leaders in the new year to help their projects thrive and make a difference in their communities.”

Bow Seat is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit whose mission is to empower youth to connect, create and communicate for the protection of the ocean and broader “blue planet,” and it describes itself as the world’s largest youth environmental program for the creative arts.

For more information about the True Blue Fellowship Program and the 2026 recipients, go to https://bowseat.org/programs/true-blue-fellowship/.