Two Pitzer Students Promote Environmental Education With Projects for Peace Award

Sammy Basa ’25 and Zhané Moledina ’25 have received a 2025 Projects for Peace Award to collaborate on a community-based environmental education project for Sibuyan Island. Located in the Philippines, Sibuyan is known as the Galápagos of Asia for its rich biodiversity.

Each project includes a $10,000 award in support of the projects. The Projects for Peace program evolved from the vision of philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis, who challenged tomorrow’s promising leaders to find ways to “prepare for peace.”

The program invites undergraduates from more than 90 U.S. colleges and universities that participate in the Davis United World College Scholars Program to design grassroots projects that promote peace and understanding.

Preserving an ecological jewel

According to the Foundation for the Philippine Environment, Sibuyan is one of the last bastions of biodiversity in the Philippines. Sibuyan has a high number of endemic species recorded with approximately 77% of the species found in the area, but it faces environmental threats on various fronts, including mining, illegal logging, and destructive fishing practices.

Basa and Moledina’s project builds on what Basa began last year when he surveyed imperiled coral reefs in Sibuyan, which is his family’s homeland. Moledina was a contributor for Basa’s research project and helped document the reefs to support conservation efforts. Basa and Moledina wanted to take these efforts further and engage more community members in Sibuyan.

“Getting this fellowship has truly felt like a first big step in my personal journey of driving impact on Sibuyan, especially since the amount we received can go such a long way there,” said Basa.

Projects for Peace is supporting their work for their project, which is titled “Project Isa Lang: Community-Led Environmental Education to Conserve a Globally Unique Island.” “Isa Lang” means “Only One” in Tagalog, which speaks to Sibuyan’s singular identity as an ecological gem.

Environmental education made by and for community

Basa and Moledina plan to spend the summer partnering with community members and educators at the Teresa Bernas Memorial School (TBMS). TBMS was founded by Basa’s grandfather and named after Basa’s great-grandmother. Basa and Moledina intend to create dynamic lesson plans and activities for a sustainable environmental education project. The project’s emphasis on the island’s unique ecology provides an approach that will allow students to develop a positive identity rooted in pride for Sibuyan.

Basa and Moledina will partner with science experts, educators, and other community members to create a common species field guide of bird, reptile, and plant species on the island. This field guide will serve as the project's focal point—guiding hands-on, outdoor exploration to be supplemented with in-class lesson plans at TBMS. To measure the project’s impact, they will develop and administer an environmental awareness assessment, tracking growth in local ecological knowledge over time.

“This project feels deeply personal to me because I know how life-changing access to opportunity and education can be,” said Moledina. “Project Isa Lang perfectly embodies these values, and through it, I want to help facilitate the kind of access that empowers others to take charge of their own paths.”

Moledina is an organizational studies and political studies combined major with a minor in Spanish. She brings tangible expertise in policy, advocacy, and community-based participatory research to Project Isa Lang. 

As a participant in the Critical Action & Social Advocacy (CASA) Pitzer program, Moledina worked with the reentry organization Starting Over, Inc. Starting Over helps people transition to independent lives after experiencing homelessness and/or incarceration. Moledina partnered with Starting Over to create and distribute the “Reentry Resource Guide for Riverside County.” MEF Associates, a social policy research firm, refined Moledina’s skills in developing research-backed education materials and evaluating social programming.

Future generations of Sibuyan Island

Basa, who studies environmental science at Pitzer, recently joined his family members to establish the non-profit One Sibuyan Initiative. He heads the non-profit as the chief operating officer to support conservation and community initiatives. He hopes Project Isa Lang will help establish more partnerships to promote environmental stewardship on the island.

Basa and Moledina are supported by local and national partners in the Philippines. They also will be joined by friends from Claremont and across the country, who are traveling to Sibuyan to volunteer for the initial stage of the project: Alex Albrecht CMC’23, Sophia Beredo (Boston University ’25), Ella Francis ’25, Gavin Horne ’25, Alexa Potter ’25, Eva Swartz ’25, and David Walker CMC’25.

In their project proposal, Basa and Moledina said: “Project Isa Lang will nurture a cycle of peace that extends far beyond the classroom, where the [legacies] of today’s generation become the foundation for a thriving, self-sustaining future.”