Eduklima 2025

EduKlima is a climate resilience initiative created by Batch 11 of the Academy of Political Management (APM). APM is the flagship program of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Philippines for progressive political leaders and policy practitioners. Each batch carries its training into practice through a batch project: participants identify a real gap in a community and design a policy intervention to close it. Graduates become members of Balai APM, the Academy's alumni organization. Batch 11 chose disaster risk in public schools as its focus and developed EduKlima to bring schools, barangays and the municipal government into one shared disaster plan.

EduKlima 2025: Climate Resilience Bootcamp took place on October 27 and 28, 2025 in Hilongos, Leyte. The two-day bootcamp gathered teachers and DRRM coordinators from the municipality's public high schools, officials from upland and lowland barangays, and representatives of the Hilongos local government unit (LGU). Batch 11 organized it with Project Batang Hilongosnon (PBH), a local civil society organization that served as area coordinator, with support from FES Philippines. Participants left with three community-led disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) plans: one for the LGU, one for lowland barangays and schools, and one for upland barangays and schools.

Extreme weather has made class suspensions more common in Philippine public schools in recent years. According to the World Bank, about 78 percent of public schools and 96 percent of students are exposed to multiple natural hazards. Between 2021 and 2023, disasters damaged some 4,000 schools and disrupted learning for two million children. The Cross Dependency Initiative's Gross Domestic Climate Risk study ranks Leyte among the five Philippine provinces most at risk from climate change.

Schools carry much of a town's disaster load. They double as evacuation centers, and their students and staff are often among the first to respond. A school's disaster plan works only when it connects to the barangay and municipal plans around it, from early warnings to evacuation agreements to budgets. EduKlima rests on that link. It places school, barangay and LGU representatives in the same room to write one plan together, then carries that plan into local policy.

The approach reflects a conviction central to FES's work: decisions hold best when the people who live with their consequences help make them, and when public institutions are equipped to carry them forward. In Hilongos, teachers and barangay officials who face floods and typhoons each year shaped the plans directly, and the municipal council has since backed the initiative.

The EduKlima team engaged local institutions well before the bootcamp. In August 2025, it consulted teachers on the program design in a hybrid session and presented the initiative to the Hilongos Local School Board, which gave its support. Batch 11 first planned the bootcamp for school representatives alone; the final design brought barangay officials and LGU representatives in alongside them. On October 27, the team paid a courtesy call to the LGU, represented by Municipal Administrator Atty. Lemuel Jan Nerves, and briefed the Sangguniang Bayan (SB) at its regular session. Councilor Bernadeth Nerves announced there that she would file a resolution supporting PBH and EduKlima.

The first day focused on diagnosis. Participants worked in three groups (the LGU, lowland barangays and schools, and upland barangays and schools) and used problem tree and objectives tree tools to map challenges in preparedness, prevention and mitigation. Lowland participants noted that their schools collect floodwater from upland areas and that warnings from education and civil defense channels do not always match. Upland participants pointed to alerts that arrive late and contingency plans that schools and barangays had not yet coordinated or rehearsed together. The LGU group identified schools without school-based DRRM plans and school programs that were not yet aligned with municipal ones.

On the second day, each group turned its diagnosis into a DRRM plan with goals, strategies, partners, resources and success indicators. The LGU plan proposes an agreement between schools and the municipal DRRM council on class suspensions, quarterly Local School Board meetings on DRRM, at least two certified emergency responders per school, and the integration of school DRRM plans into the Municipal DRRM Plan. Lowland barangays and schools proposed a Hilongos DRRM Council that convenes schools, DepEd, barangays, the LGU and civil society every quarter, along with scenario-based multi-hazard drills. Upland barangays and schools proposed joint typhoon preparedness training for barangay officials and teachers, a resolution standardizing alarm signals, and quarterly school-community coordination meetings.

Participant evaluations found that the planning tools clarified each group's disaster risk context, and that working across the LGU, barangays and schools built trust and confidence in drafting plans. Teachers who had been hesitant to join valued the chance to raise their concerns directly with local officials. Participants also asked for more time per activity, more discussion in the local language and more help connecting with technical experts, which the team has noted for future runs.

The Hilongos SB has since passed a resolution supporting EduKlima. Batch 11 and PBH now aim to have the bootcamp's plans integrated into the next Municipal DRRM Plan, and a proposed ordinance for a localized EduKlima program under Councilor Cris Antonio Ong has been identified as a further policy step. Under the project's sustainability plan, PBH takes ownership of EduKlima for follow-through and future replication, working with teachers and barangay officials who attended both days as local champions for the plans.