Anu Bazarragchaa grew up in rural Mongolia where she witnessed the intensifying impacts of climate change in her community.  She is a feminist, computational biologist and writer who uses storytelling to explore the impact of climate change on women’s lives and on her family’s community who are nomadic pastoralists whose livelihoods are threatened by a changing environment. Anu plans to draw on traditional folklore of the Buryat and Tsaatan people in her Future Rising Fellowship project to highlight the intensifying water crisis in her country.  She has written for Breathe Mongolia and is also a regional facilitator and a girl advisor at FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund.  She is inspired by her younger sister and wants her to grow up free from gender-based discrimination.

Geela Garcia is a  multimedia journalist based in Manila, Philippines. Her photographic work, which documents stories of women, food sovereignty, and the environment, aims to rewrite history from the lived experience of its all too often unseen makers. Her writing and photography have been featured in  Thomson Reuters, South China Morning Post, and Philstar among others. Her Future Rising Fellowship project will chronicle the lived experiences of indigenous Ivatan women on the island of Batanes and how they maintain their traditional farming practices despite the impact of climate change in this remote archipelagic province located on the northernmost island of the Philippines.  

Tashi Lhazom is a filmmaker from Limi valley, located in the heart of the Himalayas in Nepal. She is the daughter of a herder and the first one in her family to get an education. Tashi learned to be political, loud and assertive from a young age. She uses her voice to advocate for her community and inspire young girls from her village to dream big, own their spaces, and give back to their community. Tashi’s Future Rising Fellowship project is a short film about the pastoralist women in Limi whose way of life has changed drastically due to climate change.

Hilda Flavia Nakabuye is a Ugandan climate and environmental rights activist who founded Uganda's Fridays for Future movement. She has spoken at major global convenings to advocate for climate justice for her country Uganda, as well as gender equality and racial diversity within the climate movement. One of her environmental concerns is saving Lake Victoria, which connects Uganda to neighboring countries. As part of her activism, Nakabuye visits schools and communities to empower women to join the fight against climate change. She also created Climate Striker Diaries, an online platform to encourage digital awareness about climate change. HIlda’s Future Rising Fellowship Project will be a photo essay that chronicles her own journey as a climate activist and educator. She will tell the story of how she founded a movement in her country and her work with local communities to deploy sustainable solutions to preserve the ecosystems in and around Lake Victoria.

Astrid Peraza is a climate activist from Costa Rica. She studies Materials Science and Engineering, and is a spokesperson for the Escazu Ahora CR campaign, which works for the ratification of the Escazu Agreement in Costa Rica. Astrid is a leader with Greentalist, a program that advocates for girls’ access to climate education. Her Future Rising Fellowship project will be a short documentary film about the achievements and dreams of a women’s cooperative in a small fishing village on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica.

Named after a river in Bangladesh, Titas Ganguly grew up in Kolkata, India where increasingly frequent weather events have led to thousands of lives being uprooted and properties destroyed. As a young person he witnessed the inundation of farms with saltwater and the subsequent migration of men from his rural community to the cities where they sought work. Titas went on to found Green Crusaders India, a community-based organization that seeks to help women build sustainable economic opportunity and environmental stewardship in the Sundarbans where the world’s largest delta houses the largest tidal mangrove vegetation.  Titas’ Future Rising Fellowship project will be a film about the women of the Sundarbans, the challenges they face and the inventive local solutions they are leveraging to tackle economic and environmental instability.

Mercy Wanjiku Kamonjo is a Kenyan environmentalist and food security activist. She is also the founder of the Kuza Generation Initiative, a youth-led nonprofit organization that empowers rural communities struggling with the impacts of climate change. Mercy provides training for women and girls in arid and semi arid areas on how to use resilient climate smart agriculture techniques.  Her Future Rising Fellowship project will be a short film about a group of women in one rural community and their efforts to build food security despite a worsening drought. Mercy is a final year student at Kenyatta University pursuing a bachelors in environmental studies (resource conservation). 

Connie Molina and Faebian Cueller, 24 and 27, are award-winning multifaceted artists from Colombia. The gender non-binary activists are working with the organization Priya’s Shakti and have created an animation project featuring the first Colombian female superhero. They have worked on various agro-ecological and permaculture projects to create sustainable living spaces. Their Future Rising Fellowship project will be a series of short animated films about the impact of climate change on indigenous communities and on Colombia's rich biodiversity and ecosystems.

Aida Namukose is a photographer from Jinja, Uganda who has worked with the Kimanya Ngeyo Foundation documenting their work teaching organic and sustainable farming practices to lower income urban families. Her Future Rising Fellowship project will be a series of photo essays that tell the stories of women in her community who work in agriculture and local food industries. She will focus on farmers, market vendors, restaurant staff, and roadside vendors demonstrating the impact of the nearby Bujagali Dam, and how it has affected the women who had previously farmed on the river banks. 

Raini Sydney,  is a gardener, a storyteller and a creative-in-learning. His experience is built on collaborating with and learning from entities and individuals driving social development at the grassroots level. Having spent most of his childhood on the rural farms of the Kenyan countryside, he saw the negative effects of climate change and pesticides on the livelihoods of the rural populations. Raini’s Future Rising Fellowship project will tell stories of female rural smallholder farmers who draw on ancestral knowledge and natural solutions to build climate-resilient agricultural practices. Raini is a graduate of the African Leadership University (ALU), with a bachelor's degree in Global Challenges. He is also a trained conservationist with a Conservation Leadership Pathway training from the ALU School of Wildlife Conservation.