EcoSave-produced Documentary "The Girl Who Wasn't There"

 The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Hyunseok Elliott Lee

For the past year, Ecosave members have been working on producing promotional material to shed light on the injustices and issues in countries around the world. Recently, we turned our focus towards conducting research in the Philippines, our main country of expertise.

Ecosave had done research since last year on cases of human rights violations that were exacerbated by lack of birth certification, alongside OpenHands, influenced by the idea to produce a documentary to shed light on said issues. Researched traced us to a case of a young child called Rosario Baluyot; Baluyot was 12 years old when she was trafficked to and raped by a man in Olongapo. She was in severely injured and unwell conditions when she was rescued, but eventually succumbed to her wounds and trauma throughout the years. What got her into such a situation in the first place, as well as what stopped her from receiving adequate treatment, was her lack of birth certification.

Her abuser, allegedly a military worker in the US Naval Base in Subic Bay, was never brought to proper justice for his crimes, a result that also was attributed to the lack of birth certification (as she was never recognized as a citizen, the worker was never officially responsible for the crimes that he committed against her).

"The Girl Who Wasn't There" is a documentary that explores the unseen societal injustices that threaten the lives of the less unfortunate worldwide, told through the tragic story of a young girl who went by the name of Rosario Baluyot. Rosario was a victim of a case of terrible sexual abuse, yet her lack of a birth certificate allowed her abuser to go free without punishment. Reflecting on how society failed a young girl and her future, "The Girl Who Wasn't There" aims to see how we can make a world that keeps the hopes and dreams of the youth afloat.

Watch the documentary below:

https://filmfreeway.com/projects/3706623

Ecosave Plogging Day 2025

 EcoSave Plogging Day 2025

written by Hyunseok Elliott Lee

On July 5, 2025, EcoSave members and volunteers met at Banpodaegyo to run — and "plog," aka jog and pick up litter. Just like the 237 Run held on the same day at the same time, this campaign was meant to acknowledge the 237 million children worldwide who lack any legal identity but simultaneously raise awareness without intruding on their freedom with a visible change for residents in and around Seoul.

Armed with gloves and biodegradable trash bags, joggers crossed the bridge and meandered down side paths, picking up plastic bottles, wrappers, and litter stubbornly discarded in the streets. Every piece of trash added to the pile forced people to acknowledge how international decisions and lapses in responsibility impact local populations and even their very own daily lives — much like how ignoring 237 million children does to their development as well.

Thus, the symbolism of plogging occurred on two levels. First, it combatted the urgent local problem of urban pollution and the responsibility of all of mankind to take care of the earth that they shared. Second, it mirrored the ultimate goal of the 237 campaign — that small, incremental changes make all the difference. One run cannot fix the identity problem around the world. One clean-up cannot reverse pollution throughout cities. But each effort marks commitment, collective unity, and an ultimate hope.

Much like the name tags from the 237 Run, these featured names and facts of children benefitting from OpenHands. Therefore, EcoSave connected the physically realized act of cleaning with the symbolism behind running for an identity to stress how there is no such thing as too much effort for advocacy — either one can care for their planet or they can care for its children or they can do both.

The event concluded with the collection of trash in bags that would be separated post-event for recycling purposes. Volunteers spoke out about how they connected their personal connections to their daily realistic behaviors and international injustices. Many claimed that plogging helped them maintain a visualized purpose with an essentially invisible situation for kids who had no identity.

And as a result, EcoSave's event occurred through a dual-focus on environmental and social justice concerns. Ultimately, small efforts — picking up a single bottle, running a single kilometer, telling a single story — are often what creates change first.

On July 5, 2025, EcoSave showed that not every advocacy effort has to occur through a speech or a presentation — sometimes it's as simple as running and picking up trash and refusing to let the invisible stay unseen.

237 Run 2025

 237 Run

written by Hyunseok (Elliott) Lee

On July 5, 2025, EcoSave and other volunteers ran across the Banpodaegyo in Seoul to commemorate the estimated 237 million children without legal identity (birth certificates) as of today. Legal identity is a basic foundation for accessing many services—educational opportunities, health care, citizenship protections—and without proper documentation, millions have no access to what many people take for granted.

Participants were given a name tag. Not just any name tag, but the name of an actual child identified by OpenHands as a person without a birth certificate. Their age, sex, village, country—all printed on a name tag for participants to run with in hopes of carrying their story for the duration of the run. In official government perception, these children do not exist; this is a way to carry them for the moment.

The run had a lot of energy and a lot of introspection. Volunteers cheered each other on as they crossed the bridge, and at the same time, there was a heaviness of gratitude for those who would be unable to cross a bridge themselves in such a way to avoid such discrimination. Many runners afterward conveyed that it was a good type of hard because it resembled how much harder those children have it every day trying to get ahead without even being recognized from the start.

In addition, EcoSave sponsored a fundraiser. Each water bottle provided came with a QR code that linked to information about children without legal identity and stories of success for what would be otherwise written off as hopeless causes. Participants and onlookers alike scanned the link to learn more and were encouraged to donate whatever they could for programs seeking to give these children access to such identities.

This year's 237 Run was not only part two from last year but also part two of EcoSave's ongoing call for awareness of what exists in society and remains overshadowed. By combining the simple act of running with increased education and awareness for a small community, it enables people to become aware that international injustices exist even in small pockets.

The run closed with a small gathering where volunteers expressed their sentiments about the opportunity. Many participants expressed their hopes that this would go viral somehow—either awareness through social media or charity efforts here and there—because many didn't even recognize how privilege it is to have a legal identity/citizenship recognition until they couldn't seem to connect to any logic that deprived them from doing so.

The 237 Run reminds us that all children deserve the right to be seen.

Ecosave Philippines Outreach June 2025

Ecosave Philippines Outreach June 2025 

Written by Rebekah Hyuna Lee

 

This June, Ecosave members traveled to the Philippines for our second outreach trip of the year. Upon arriving in Manila, we traveled to Creek Village—a slum home to around 300 impoverished households, where most residents struggle to get by on a monthly income of less than 100 dollars. Like many similar villages across the country, Creek Village has been planned to be demolished by the government, which seeks to remove these villages due to the striking poverty they face and the degrading impression they create of the country as a result. These burnings strip thousands of villagers of their homes and force them to relocate to inhospitable and destitute conditions. We visited the portion of the village that remains inhabited and were greeted by a swarm of young children, excited by our arrival.

 

In this village, our objective was to install solar-powered street lamps across the village to provide a safer environment for villagers at night. We set out across the village to install the streetlamps we had bought from Korea at 10 different locations by attaching them to the exterior of households. After the installation of the street lamps, each Ecosave member led a group of children to plog around the village. After the sun had set, we returned to Creek village to feel the difference ourselves and observe the bustling village among the well-lit streets. 

The next day, we traveled to Tanza 1 and visited the Little Hands Daycare Center with a lesson on alphabets. Our members delivered an interactive presentation on each alphabet, spent time helping each child write the letters of their name, and led an engaging activity where each child made bracelets of their names with their newly-learnt knowledge on alphabets. This lesson not only provided an enriching learning experience for the children, but was another great way for Ecosave members to bond with them.

 

Following the activity, we once again took photos with instant film cameras to capture the special occasion and handed out the kids’ favorite Jollibee meals to wrap up the occasion. 

Our club traveled back to Manila, to the Mall of Asia, for our last planned activity of this outreach: fundraising to support birth registration. The theme of this fundraiser was Squid Game, and our members prepared Squid Game-themed business cards with information on Openhands and Ecosave to hand out to shoppers and game participants, like how it is iconically done in Squid Game. At the rooftop of the mall, we set up an interactive area with three stations of different games: jump rope, jegi-chagi, and ttakji-chigi. By successfully completing a number of any game, participants were given a prize of assorted Korean snacks, encouraging them to look further into our club’s efforts to support the issue. 

Each year, our club seeks new methods of campaigning and making meaningful influence. By strengthening bonds with villages we’ve come to know and reaching out to new ones, we stay committed to expanding our areas of influence on communities in the Philippines.

Sea Levels Set to Rise for Centuries

Sea Levels Set to Rise for Centuries

Written by Rebekah Hyuna Lee

The pace of sea level rise continues to intensify throughout the 21st century, showing no signs of slowing down. The doubling of the pace of sea level rise over the past three decades is predicted to double again by 2100, reshaping coastlines and threatening hundreds of millions of lives. 

Given current global warming trends continue, sea levels are expected to rise by one centimeter per year in just a few generations. However, even if the target of the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 1.5°C is met, it will not significantly prevent the accelerating rising sea levels. Even a small increase in sea level could lead to catastrophic circumstances for over 230 million people living near today’s sea level. 

The sensitivity of polar ice sheets even to minimal warming was most alarming to scientists. Satellite observations show that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which hold enough frozen water to raise sea levels by 65 meters, are melting and calving by a rate of 400 billion tonnes per year. This irreversible collapse of ice sheets leads to centuries of sea level rise, unpreventable by any immediate emissions reduction. 

The unsettling findings of this research show that without significant investments in coastal defense, many of the world’s largest cities stand at risk of flood. However, the slowing of sea level rise requires a long-term temperature goal; we may already be on an irreversible path, with only possible solutions such as geoengineering and the relocation of society.

Source: https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/05/scientists-warning-oceans-rising-fast/

Ecosave Philippines Outreach 2025

Written by: Hyunseok Elliott Lee

Last week, our Ecosave members took part in our annual outreach trip to the Philippines. We took time to travel to several towns in Manila and the surrounding areas, interacting with the children and residents of each area, some of whom we were seeing for the first time.

Upon our arrival, we first travelled to the area of Tondo, one of the districts of Manila. While Tondo is the most populated of the Manila districts, boasting a population of 650,000, it also holds some of the most impoverished sights within the entire country. Often referred to as the biggest slum in the country, Tondo suffers dire conditions, with the staggering majority of its residents suffering from severe poverty. The area is also subject to extreme crime rates and lack of basic services such as sanitation and electricity.

However, although the area was portrayed as rather miserable and harsh, the people were extremely welcoming and warm, making our visit much more interesting and comfortable. We were able to talk to a shop owner and volunteer for OpenHands’ birth certificate initiatives, who navigated us through daily life in her area. We were informed that most of Tondo was recently devastated by a large fire last November, which cut out access to electricity. We were enamored by her optimism and continuous efforts to care for others, even in the face of such extreme adversity. We initially came to Tondo to get a scope of the conditions in the area, but our talks with her, as well as our overall experience there, has inspired us to come back to provide direct aid to the children there sooner or later.

That same day, we also travelled down south to a town called Cavite City. Cavite, a seaside town, has a distinct area of stilt houses built on top of the coasts and seas. This area has also often been viewed as an impoverished area with the structures being built very dangerously and unmonitored. The visit, though brief, gave us a glimpse of the different types of slum housing in the country, and also allowed us to investigate the arising problems unique to those specific areas. We learned of the dangers around the geographical challenges that the area faced, such as children falling under the cracks of the stilt houses and drowning, as well as houses collapsing. It was still refreshing, however, to interact with groups of children who had come out to greet us. A similar sense of optimism echoed between the children of Cavite and the people from Tondo, which came to us as a beautiful representation of the strength that keeps us going, but also a call for help, help that we could perhaps rise up to provide.

We spent the last day visiting Tanza 1, an area that our current members had become quite familiar with. We visited the “Little Hands Daycare Center” and decided to hold a unique education activity for them: a lesson on dental care and brushing teeth. We prepared a couple of sets of plastic teeth and brushes for the children to try for themselves, and went through a thorough explanation process, with the assistance of our OpenHands volunteers, who served as translators of sorts throughout.

After that, we had time to bond with everybody, with some of us reuniting with kids we saw on previous visits. We made sure to take photos with our instant film cameras, which has become a tradition of sorts now. We concluded our visit with giving away meals that we had prepared from Jolibees, which has always been widely popular with both kids and parents.

 Once again, we made sure no one left without anything in their hands. As we can only reach the Philippines for limited amounts of time every year, we always make it our mission to maximize our work when we’re actually around. Hopefully, the optimism that fuels the lives of the people we help every day can be passed onto us and our efforts to support them. 

NASA's Mission for Earth's Ocean

NASA's Mission for Earth's Ocean

Written by Rebekah Hyuna Lee

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is NASA’s mission to tackle issues related to Earth’s changing ocean, availability of freshwater resources, and other matters. Their studies are an essential for the achievement of global goals on clean air and water, preparation for extreme events, and long-term environmental changes. 

In order to monitor water resources on land, track sea level changes, and monitor coastal processes and ocean currents, SWOT uses radar interferometry technology to observe various bodies of water.

As a result of global warming, there is a constant movement of freshwater resources from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. A thorough knowledge of river flow is essential to manage water resources and forecast floods and droughts, and control its impacts on sectors such as industry and agriculture. To help scientists better understand the global water cycle, SWOT manages this by providing data from thousands of lakes and rivers.

Although much of the technology used today monitors ocean currents occurring large-scale, much of the motion in the ocean occurs small-scale, making them difficult to detect with our current satellites. These small-scale factors affect a great portion of the transport of water, making them important factors when it comes to assessing climate change, even though they occur at much smaller scales than El Niño and La Niña conditions. SWOT makes it possible to measure small-scale ocean currents, better understand coastal processes, and develop more advanced models of ocean circulation data. 

Source: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/science/overview/?page=0&per_page=40&order=position+asc&search=&hover=false&show_institution=true&show_email=false&category=214