Former NextGen Climate Bootcamp fellows returned this year as mentors, bringing lessons from community reporting, newsrooms, fellowships and climate summits to a new generation of climate storytellers.

This year’s NextGen mentors were once NextGen fellows themselves. That’s what we’re proudest of.

They know what it feels like to pitch that first climate story, get pushed outside their comfort zone, go into the field and wonder if they’re getting it right.

Now they’re back with more stories, more experience and more lessons to pass on. For Climate Tracker Asia, that’s exactly the kind of community NextGen is built to grow.

Finding the kind of journalist you want to become

When freelance journalist Ivy Marie Mangadlao joined NextGen in 2023, she had just graduated with a degree in accounting.

As a provincial journalist based in the Caraga Region of Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, she never had the luxury of specializing. One day she’d be covering tourism, the next crime, politics, culture or disasters.

“Before NextGen, I couldn’t really answer the question, ‘What kind of journalist do you want to be?'” she recalled. “But after the fellowship, I found myself wanting to tell more climate and environmental stories.”

Growing up in a region regularly hit by powerful typhoons shaped the stories she chose to tell.

“Climate storytelling wasn’t something I intentionally chose as a career path,” Ivy said. “It was something that naturally happened because of where I live, the stories I cover and the people I’ve met along the way.”

Her reporting on Super Typhoon Odette (Rai) also taught her that a disaster story shouldn’t disappear when the headlines do.

“A climate story doesn’t end when the floodwaters recede or when relief operations are over,” she said. “Sometimes, the most important stories are the ones we tell years later, when we ask what changed, what worked, what didn’t and what we can do differently.”

Climate stories are everywhere

For Elle Guison, NextGen changed what even counts as a climate story.

“Climate Tracker taught us that not all environment stories are climate stories, and even non-environmental stories can be climate stories,” she said.

During the fellowship, fellows experimented with connecting climate to subjects that wouldn’t sound environmental at first glance, from pop culture to travel to everyday life.

That lesson stuck: climate journalism isn’t about bolting the words ‘climate change’ onto an environmental story. It’s about finding the real connection and helping audiences understand why it matters.

It also means translating difficult science. As former fellow Joshua Mendoza told this year’s cohort, journalists often stand between highly technical research and the communities that need to understand it.

“Yung role ng climate journalist… is pag-bridge ng very technical na research papers or insights ng scientists and researchers sa public.” (The role of a climate journalist is to bridge highly technical research papers and the insights of scientists and researchers with the public.)

Joshua’s reporting has taken him deep into agricultural communities, covering farmers, changing weather patterns, pests, food security and livelihoods. One lesson he keeps returning to: with millions of people across the Philippines, there are millions of different climate stories, and the people closest to those communities are often best positioned to tell them.

When a local story travels farther than you expected

Edmar de los Santos didn’t originally see himself as a climate journalist either.

“Hindi ko talaga in-aspire na mag-report ng climate change or environment because ang interest ko noon ay more on entertainment, lifestyle.” (I never really aspired to report on climate change or the environment because my interests were more in entertainment and lifestyle.)

Through NextGen, that changed.

“Through that fellowship, parang na-realize ko na pwede pala akong magkwento ng environment.” (Through the fellowship, I realized that I could tell environmental stories too.)

One of those stories examined how shifting weather patterns were affecting traditional salt making in Ilocos Norte. That community story later became part of the portfolio that helped open another door: reporting from COP29 in Baku.

Edmar admitted feeling intimidated pitching beside professional journalists, worried his story was ‘only’ about Ilocos Norte. He later realized that was the point: community storytellers bring perspectives into national and global climate conversations that might never reach those rooms otherwise.

How do you make people care?

For former fellow Zarena Hermogeno, the challenge in climate communication isn’t finding something important to say. It’s earning someone’s time.

“How can I make someone devote their 10 minutes of supposed laundry-washing time para basahin yung story ko about the climate?” she asked. (How can I convince someone to devote 10 minutes they could have spent doing their laundry to reading my climate story?)

“Ang hirap kunin ang oras ng isang tao.” (It is difficult to earn someone’s time.)

Her answer sits at the heart of NextGen: make the story relevant to the life someone is already living.

“How do you make them care? Write powerful and moving stories, relatable stories, na magigets nila at mararamdaman nila na, ‘Ah, nangyayari pala sa akin ‘to.'” (How do you make them care? Write powerful, moving and relatable stories that people can understand and feel, stories that make them realize: ‘This is happening to me too.’)

The circle continues

NextGen was never just about finishing a fellowship or publishing one climate story. The hope is that fellows keep reporting, keep experimenting, keep asking better questions long after the program ends.

And eventually, some come back. Not as young storytellers figuring things out for the first time, but as journalists who’ve reported from communities, worked in newsrooms, chased other fellowships, covered global climate negotiations, and learned lessons of their own.

Then they pass those lessons forward.

This September 3, we’re celebrating the next group taking that step.

Join us for the NextGen Climate Bootcamp Class of 2026 Graduation on September 3 at 6:00 PM Manila time. Meet this year’s fellows, hear their journey, and celebrate the stories and storytellers who’ll shape climate journalism across Asia in the years ahead.