Exciting news this week with the announcement of the Disaster Resilience Journal; an interactive documentary that examines how individuals, communities and countries around the world are building resilience in a landscape of climate change, and social, economic and cultural shifts.
Funded by the European Commission’s Department for Humanitarian Aid & Civil Protection (ECHO), the project highlights its work with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and National Societies from Europe and the world.
Not only is is great to see such a large organisation utilising the form of interactive documentary, but it was also the result of a collaboration with 2014 Peabody Award winners and i-Docs 2014 alumni, Elaine McMillion-Sheldon, Director of Hollow and Mike Robbins of Helios Design Labs.
Helios announced the project on Monday with this great blog post, which also gives a small insight into the process:
Mike Robbins of Helios Design Labs (that’s us), and Elaine Sheldon, director of the epic web-doc Hollow, spent months researching and writing and interviewing and chasing down images and video and doing lots and lots of writing, much of it done on the move, in weird places like Tirana, Albania or Paddington Station in London.
Elaine has already published a run down of her personal favourite stories from the project, which you can read on her blog. Her post includes a lot of stories that are yet to come, as the stories are set to be released on a daily basis:
Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency, severity and magnitude, warn the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the European Commission today. Everyone – from European citizens to policy-makers – needs to be more prepared for the impact of this new phenomenon at home and around the world. To stimulate the discussion and boost awareness about upward disaster trends and the efforts needed to mitigate them, the IFRC, 12 National Red Cross Societies in Europe and the European Commission are launching a storytelling campaign about the importance of preparing for disasters and strengthening community resilience.
For 42 days, the IFRC – European Commission campaign will present daily stories of resilient people via social media, blogs and word of mouth. The Disaster Resilience Journal will tell the stories of how communities in 24 different countries prepare for disasters, such as building safer shelters in Haiti and in the Philippines, terracing to avoid soil erosion in Rwanda, carrying out evacuation drills in Bangladesh and planting vegetable gardens in Mauritania’s desert. The Journal will show the difference made for vulnerable people by the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies with financial support from the European Union.
Check out the Disaster Resilience Journal today, but also keep up with the new stories published over the next 38 days. Yoi stories of disaster resilience on disasterjournal.tumblr.com.