‘YOUNG VOICES, LIVED TRUTHS’: Student anthology amplifies Iloilo climate stories from margins

By Joseph Bernard A. Marzan

A new anthology edited and published by Development Communication students of the West Visayas State University-College of Communication was launched on Thursday, April 9, aiming to elevate the voices of sectors in Iloilo bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

“Klima kag Pamatan’on: Isturya kang Iloilo” (Climate and the Youth: the Story of Iloilo) by the WVSU-Development Communicators’ Society contains stories, poems, and essays drawn from the lived experiences of people in the city and province of Iloilo.

Pieces include “Reimagining Iloilo City’s Wetland Origins” by Ejay Pasamante, which discusses the city’s mangrove-laden history; “The Sea He Came Back To” by Marcial Powell Macahilas Jr. and “Alyas Toto,” a narration of the experiences of Fidel, a fisher from Tigbauan, about changes in the sea over the years; and “Pasanpasang Pag-asa” by Louela Grace Pallada and Jovan Cris Santarina, which tells the story of 20-year-old farmer Joven from San Joaquin.

The book is a product of the Green Rising Fund grant launched by the Kabataang Resilient partnership between the Positive Youth Development Network and the United Nations Children’s Fund Philippines, which supports youth-led local solutions for climate action and disaster resilience.

WVSU-DCS chairperson Jan Andrew Gelera, the book’s editor, described the project as an effort to “break spaces of comfort.”

“We believe that we need to publish stories that matter and stories that mirrors and moves people. […] We want these stories not to remain on the ground, but to break echo chambers, to break the circles that they’re very comfortable with,” Gelera said.

“All the contents and stories of the book are real. These are stories of the people, and stories told by the people. These aren’t created by us fictionally, because what’s the point of creating climate stories when we are already experiencing the climate crisis?” he added.

Gelera said the main challenge in producing the book was having to decolonize their approach and deconstruct their strategies.

He said the team shifted away from the focus group discussions and small group interviews the organization had used in the past, opting instead for free-flowing discussions that yielded more content.

“The approach that we did was literally ‘pakikipagkwentuhan’ and ‘pakikisama’, so we had no guidelines [or] no rules. We played with our communities. We did have a program, but it was more free-flowing, because it was more important for us to know the context and stories of the communities then to follow plotted processes and programs,” he said.

Prof. Joesyl Marie Aranas, chairperson of the WVSU-COC Development Communication division, said the book’s development also integrated lessons from the group’s participatory action research partnership with the University of the Philippines Visayas’ Action Research Project.

“The [UPV-ARP] workshops and mentorship taught us that there are different things or methods that we can use to talk to the community that isn’t on a knowledge deficit,” Aranas said.

“It’s not us asking people what’s wrong with them [or] assuming things that they need, but it’s allowing the community to share their experiences and [be a] safe space for them to really share what they need,” she added.

Both Gelera and Aranas said the anthology would not be the end of their pursuit of telling climate stories.

“There are more stories from the communities that we want to tell. Hopefully, this doesn’t end here, with the people having copies of the book, or with our friends, but with people [like] the people on the roadsides, the mute, [and] the children without homes. We hope to resurface these stories soon,” Gelera said.

The WVSU-DCS plans to return to the communities where it gathered stories to share the finished anthology before marketing the book externally.

The anthology comes as Iloilo province and the wider Western Visayas region contend with intensifying climate impacts, including more frequent flooding, coastal erosion, and typhoon damage that disproportionately affect farming and fishing communities.