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College of the Atlantic 2007 graduate Juan Pablo Hoffmaister traveled the world even before he received a yearlong fellowship

Juan Pablo '07 Hoffmaister, resting for a moment in Vietnam.

from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to look at how communities were adapting to climate change across the globe. As one of two elected youth representatives to the United Nations Environmental Programme from North America, he attended international meetings in Dubai, Brazil, New York City and Germany. He also used his understanding of international diplomacy to help galvanize the international youth movement at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Nairobi in 2006-an effort that had a notable impact on the most recent negotiations, in Bali.

His passion and expertise caught the ear of National Public Radio reporter Dan Charles, who recently interviewed Hoffmaister in Trinidad. "I started the journey thinking that I was going to go out there and collect success stories," he told Charles. "Within a couple of months, I realized that what I was collecting was survival stories."

Writes Charles, "Hoffmaister is 24 years old, a citizen of Costa Rica and a recent graduate of College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor,

David Malakoff '86, co-creator of NPR's Climate Connections series

David Malakoff '86, the National Public Radio editor,

co-creator of the Climate Connections series.

Maine. Since last summer, he has been on a voyage of discovery, a yearlong tour of places that may bear the brunt of changes in Earth's climate. It's funded through a fellowship from the Thomas Watson Foundation, a charitable trust focused on education and world affairs. Hoffmaister also set up a blog at changingclimates.info."

"I really was trying to understand - how can we find global solutions?" Hoffmaister says.

Click on the link above to read the full transcript, hear the audio version, or see Hoffmaister's slides on the Climate Connections series. This series, not incidentally, has an additional, and major, COA link. It was the idea of two of NPR's editors-one of them being David Malakoff, a 1986 graduate of COA.

To read more about Juan Hoffmaister, use the following links: