Aunt Lucy was my mother’s sister and best friend. Every year she’d visit with my favorite treats, and I’d hear her and my mom laughing late into the night.
Last November, during Super Typhoon Kristine, she fell and hit her head. Roads were blocked; it took two days to reach a hospital. The doctors were missing—they too were victims—and the CT machines had been washed away. We waited two weeks for an ambulance, and when she finally reached Manila, it was too late.
We buried her on Christmas Day.
Our family is just my mother and me. Years earlier, my father had died of heat stroke. With my dad gone and now Aunt Lucy too, I began to see my life as more fragile, and my sense of mortality sharpened.
That Christmas night, my mother and I sat at the dinner table staring at the two empty chairs across from us. We had prepared a feast but could barely eat. And I understood: people are not harmed by nature alone—they are harmed because climate disasters are also health disasters, and when systems fail, families lose the people they love.
That moment clarified my purpose. Rebuilding houses had always been my comfort zone—the familiar, easy way out. But losing Aunt Lucy forced me to confront my discomfort: that I needed to learn about health, and how fragile systems decide who survives.
Stepping into that discomfort led me to help form the Southeast Asia Climate and Health Policy Network a space to work with decision makers so that policies can care rather than endanger.
Through our Public Narrative sessions, it became clear that across our disciplines—from mental well-being, sex education, children’s health, first aid, and music-based therapy—we as Equity Initiative fellows share one conviction: care is strength. We turn pain into practice, and practice into purpose.
But today, storms are stronger, the heat more brutal, and our clinics, classrooms, and homes are cracking under pressure. If poor decisions continue, more lives will be lost.
Yet if we act together with decision makers, our region can become a living network of care: policies rooted in lived experience, communities linked like lifelines across borders, and families kept safe during climate disasters. Imagine a future with no one dying, no one falling ill, no one left behind because all official decisions are based on safety, kindness, and care.
So here is my ask: join us—sign up when we launch the Southeast Asia Climate and Health Policy Network in Bangkok, March 2026. Bring your time, your expertise, or your institutional support. Because the future we need will be built by those who choose to care—so that climate disasters will no longer cause families to face another holiday with empty chairs at the table.
Author: Dr. Pamela Gloria Cajilig
Pamela is an anthropologist passionate about bringing participatory and design-based approaches to disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) & climate change adaptation (CCA). Pamela is the co-founder of Curiosity Design Research, which has delivered over 300 research and consulting projects for public and private organizations in the Philippines and for clients across four continents. She is also a professorial lecturer at the College of Architecture at the University of the Philippines College of Architecture where she is initiating multisectoral and cross-disciplinary initiatives in disaster resilience.
