Joy Chapman,70, retired from work in 2018 but decided she’d never become a “boring” granny. She joined local gym and got herself a hard workout routine which sees her in the gym every day for two and a half hours. She said, “I was afraid of turning 70, but I don’t feel my age at all.”

As her confidence in the gym improved, she hardly spent a day without going to the gym. “When I first started, I would come home feeling tired,” she said. “Every muscle ached, but as I progressed, my fitness levels improved and I got better. I would never have believed in 100 years that I would love the gym so much.”

Joy said, “Working out and staying fit stops things from getting me down.” The granny has been longing for living since losing her husband in 2011, when he was just 58—making Joy realize life is valuable. She said, “My husband died very young and very quickly. He became ill in February, was diagnosed (诊断) in March and died on April 22. No one could believe it. Everybody was shocked at his death. When he died, it made me think deeply of my life and I am quite a confident and strong person as a result.”

Every day when she does her workouts, Joy meets up with a group of pals who help keep her young. She said, “I’ve made brilliant friends. As soon as I step in the gym, there is friendly humour with the receptionists, the trainers, the cleaner-everyone. They all think I’m mad, but in a nice way. I’m the fittest granny in the town. I’d advise other people in later life not to be scared by the gym. Give it a go, because it’s just great.”

It was early November in 2013 when Ronan Renz Napoto and his family in Eastern Visayas, Philippines, heard over the news that there was a typhoon coming. “Living in the Pacific, we’re used to having typhoons so we weren’t very worried,” he said. When Typhoon Haiyan hit, they were unprepared for its violence. For years after, Ronan would have nightmares of the day. “Everything keeps on flashing back to me. It’s still painful to remember those events,” he said.

It was his journey to overcome those difficulties that led Ronan down the path of climate advocacy (宣传组). He started to actively volunteer with Greenpeace, participating in designing posters and helping with organizing activities. Ronan also took part in influencing policy makers in his community about creating effective environmental and plastic policies. His most memorable activity with Greenpeace is also the one closest to his heart, and that is collecting stories about typhoon from the different communities.

“It reminds me that behind the science of climate change, there are real people with real stories,” Ronan said. “Data are important but we don’t want to be just remembered as numbers, we want to be       remembered and our stories to be remembered about who we are and how we struggled.”

Ronan, is also the founder of Balud, a youth-led organization. “Coming from the disaster- affected area, I wanted to highlight the youth leaders from outside the big cities. In Balud, we create more opportunities for young people who are coming from vulnerable (易受伤害的) communities so that everybody knows that we also have powerful stories behind the science of climate change,” he said.

The process has not been easy for the young man, but Ronan’s determination and passion keeps him focused on his job. “We have in our local language the word Padayon, which means ‘to keep going’.”

It was a quiet village in which there was a military camp(军营).It was far from the towns and cities and there were some high mountains around. Of course it was a good place for training the new soldiers. But it was difficult for the young men to go outside. Mr White, an officer of forty, was strict with them and he hardly let them leave the camp.

Once Mr White was ill in bed. He couldn’t work and a young officer, Mr Hunt began to train the new soldiers instead of him. He knew the young men well and let nine soldiers go to the nearest town to have a holiday. But night fell and none came back to the camp. He was worried about it and stood at the gate. It was five to twelve when Mr Hunt decided to go to the town and see what was happening to the young men. He started the car quickly and set off. At that moment the nine soldiers came back. It seemed they drank wine. Of course they found the officer was angry.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the first soldier. “I left the town on time. But something was wrong with my bus on my way here. I had to buy a horse and made it run fast. Bad luck! It died and I had to run back.”

And the other seven soldiers said they were late for the same reasons. It was the last soldier’s turn. He said, “I’m sorry, sir. I got on a bus on time, but…”

Having heard this, the officer became even angrier and stopped him at once. He called out, “If you say something was wrong with your bus, I’ll punish you at once!”

“No, no, sir,” said the young man. “My bus was all right, but the horse died!”