Kat Dalon has a gigantic amount of willpower to fight for justice. As a member of the Save our schools network (SOS), she defends the right to education and her indigenous Lumad community , which are threatened by the government forces. She uses agroecology to obtain more food security in her community and takes action to address climate change.
Key words: indigenous peoples, climate youth, activism, agroecology
Get to know Kat in the video and read more about her work below the video.
The SOS-network was founded during the regime of Rodrigo Duterte, when military attacks on indigenous Lumad schools started to increase and several schools had to close their doors. Kat was a student at one of these schools, the Mindanao Interfaith Services foundation (MISFI). Kat herself is a Manobo, an ethnic group within the much larger Lumad community. ‘Lumad’ means ‘indigenous’.
The MISFI was one of Solidagro's partners during the 2017-2021 programme. The foundation incorporates agroecology into its curriculum and teaches students and their communities to engage in sustainable agriculture. In other Lumad schools, pupils learn to carry the responsibility of their own vegetable gardens. Afterwards, they pass on this knowledge to their parents.
Caring as a form of resistance
In 2019, as militarisation in her community increased, Kat enrolled in Lumad Bakwit School for refugees about 10 kilometres from the capital Manila. The school was co-founded by the Save Our School Network. At the Lumad Bakwit School, students grow their vegetables in an agroecological way. Access to land is a sensitive issue for the Lumad community, because the army wants to expel the population from their ancestral lands. Working the land with care for nature and respect for their ancestral traditions therefore has an important symbolic value and is a form of resistance for them.
Youth in action against environmental threats
Our local Philippine partner CCNCI (Climate Change Network for Community-based Initiatives) is working together with the SOS network to educate the students of the Lumad Bakwit School on climate change. This education has empowered them to take action to draw attention to the environmental threats to their ancestral land in Mindanao. Kat herself is an advocate for the protection of the Pantaron mountain range, one of the last remaining carbon sinks in Mindanao, which is threatened by mining.
Bursting with talent
When Kat graduated from Lumad School, she enrolled in the University of the Philippines in the programme 'Associate in Arts, Creative Writing in Filipino'. As a first-year student at the university, she participated in the student council elections early this year and won. She continues to advocate for climate and agroecology, also at her university.
