NEWS

Farron Taijeron, PI-CASC Climate Adaptation for Resource Management (CARM) fellow in Guam, headed to Washington, D.C., last month to attend the 2024 Planet Forward Summit as a finalist in the StoryFest competition. Planet Forward is a creative environmental storytelling platform founded and coordinated through George Washington University that connects students from across the globe to learn, build relationships, and tell their stories. The Planet Forward StoryFest “highlights the voices of students, seeking to understand and illuminate their own innovations for how to best care for the earth.” Taijeron, a University of Guam agriculture and life sciences undergraduate, participated in the competition’s Best Video by a Non-Media Student category. He claimed a spot in the finals out of hundreds of entries with his video, “When Public Health = Planet Health,” which reflected on his environmental conservation journey of documenting issues that threaten Guam’s natural resources through social media. Through his social group, the Guam Extreme Cleanup Crew, he leads volunteers to conduct island cleanups in areas difficult for the average person to reach, like cliffsides or dense jungles. The overarching message in his video was to encourage individuals to integrate environmentally conscious actions into their everyday hobbies and outdoor physical activities.

Although he did not win, he used the opportunity to build his network with other creatives and participate in a panel, “How We Did It: Crafting Narratives from the Field. “Being on the panel was cool,” Taijeron said. “What was even cooler was the reception I got. I estimate 20-30 people said something nice about my Storyfest entry or what I had to say on the panel.”

During the panel discussion, Taijeron spoke about what drives him to continue to bring awareness to the issues that affect Guam’s natural resources. “My audience was very simple and clear to me: my audience is Taotao Tåno, the people of the land, the people of Guam, and people with ties to Guam, and in particular, the kind of people who wouldn’t be in this room,” Taijeron explained to the other panelists. He continued, “I have this lifelong infatuation with my island, and I just can’t get enough of it. And I see, like everywhere else, there’re a lot of issues: invasive species, climate change, human-caused degradation, and so on, and it’s just not on our radars because we’re not taught it in school, or we’re not paying attention in school {laugh}, and so I want to… shine a light on those things, the good and the bad, to try to get peoples baselines up so we can be better stewards of our land.”

Click here to view his panel discussion (40 seconds).