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This is an excerpt from the MEGA July 2025 New Voices Feature
The world is not exactly in its best shape right now. It is almost like you can pick a concept out of hat, anything from the weather to human rights, and it is going to need fixing. Hyperbolic idea or not, there are actual plans to colonize Mars. Just in case humanity needs to start fresh.
Ideas like this certainly have a dystopian ring to it. But then you have people like Patricia Nicole Lucena who have chosen to take up the cudgels instead of falling into an existential crisis. At 24, she is the executive director of Yabong Philippines, a youth-led organization that encourages its fellow young people to participate in governance, media and information literacy, and nation-building. She has fleshed out these goals by leading projects like the International MIL Youth Summit and ProMIL camps.
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Her efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2020, she received the Alumni Excellence Award from the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines and the Agsurnon Bagani Award for her outstanding contributions to the province of Agusan del Sur the following year. She also participated in the UN Women’s Gen-Forum 2024: Young Leaders for Women, Peace, and Security in Asia and the Pacific.
If it sounds like a lot, it is. Just don’t tell her it is too much—Patricia is more succinct in her approach. She describes herself as a “Mindanoan feminist.” This straightforward way of thinking shapes her work. It is most apparent in the way she sees feminism through a pragmatic lens rather than a lofty idea.
“I personally believe that feminism is not just about empowering women to voice out or to express themselves, but it is actually giving them opportunities to change the landscape that we are in,” she explains. “It is actually capacitating them and giving them equal voices when it comes to the changes that we want in society.”
It is a deceptively simple plan. Give people a chance and they will take it. It is in this idea that Lucena is equal parts hopeful and realistic. “It is crazy for me to say that I want our government to be gender inclusive all the time,” she says with a laugh.
Then her tone becomes more serious, “I think it would be achievable if we touch one life. Maybe we are hoping that in the future when they become, let’s say, leaders who are part of the government, they would be able to advocate for women and other gender minorities.”
This push-and-pull between youthful idealism and the cold, hard truth of how life works is echoed when Lucena talks about how effective advocacy work truly is. She zeroes in on social media as an example.
“There are more people who are supporting the feminist ideologies than before, especially with my generation. Now we see how people, even on TikTok and Facebook, are more outspoken. That is a cultural change,” she says. “But at the end of the day, if we really want to achieve change, it is not just about how we type it on social media or how we talk about things online or how we feel, but it is also about the policies that we have.”
Leadership among the youth is not unusual. Greta Thunberg, Nina Gualinga, Malala Yousafzai—these are just some examples of young people stepping up to point out the obvious: things are broken. While the oldies in the room are still pointing fingers or living in denial, they have already been working towards solutions.
Read more about Patricia Lucena’s work for a better future in MEGA’s July 2025 issue now available on Readly, Magzter, Press Reader and Zinio.
Photographed by TIM DUEÑAS. Art Direction CLARE MAGNO. Sittings Editor STEF JUAN. Styling GEE JOCSON’S TEAM. Makeup CLAIRE SEELIN-DIOKNO. Hair RICKY DIOKNO.
