Raven Mensenas

Raven Mensenas is a women’s and children’s rights advocate who is currently a student taking Bachelor of Arts in Communication Major in Journalism and Minor in Broadcasting Communication in the University of the Philippines Baguio. She is currently the chairperson of Innabuyog-Gabriela Youth (IGY) Metro Baguio. She was also the chairperson of IGY UPB for two consecutive years. IGY is an organization of indigenous women youth that campaigns for the elimination of violence against women and for gender liberation. Ever since she was a child, she has been active in various social actions. Through theater dance, she joined a community-based child-led organization called Children and Youth Organization in her hometown at Bagong Silang, Caloocan City. She became the steering head of the Children and Youth Organization from 2015 to 2017. CYC is a grass-root organization that campaigns against corporal punishment, child labor, among other issues. It is a local partner of Save The Children Philippines, where she also has been a part of the Children talk to Children program that passed the Children Review on the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child for the first time in the Philippines and was presented in Geneva, Switzerland. She helped found the Caloocan Children’s Coalition, the broad coalition of youth-led organizations that campaign for children’s rights in the city, where she became its first lead convenor in 2017. Through this coalition, she helped draft the Caloocan Children’s Code of its local government. She was also the representative of Caloocan City in the Children Council of the National Anti-Poverty Commission of the Philippines and the representative of Luzon Region in the Asean Youth Forum in 2019. Raven dedicated her childhood in serving her community and advocating for children’s rights and welfare. Now, she has been active in the collective action for indigenous women’s right for self-determination and gender equality in the Cordillera.