Reframing Disaster Stories: Global Report Launch & Roundtable
Calling media professionals, climate leaders, researchers, funders, and ecosystem enablers:
Every year, climate shocks disrupt millions of lives—yet the stories told about these crises often miss the complete picture. How disasters are reported shapes where funding flows, which solutions are prioritized, and whose voices are heard.
Goonj Knowledge and Research Institute (GKRI) invites you to the launch of a landmark research report analyzing the global landscape of disaster stories. Drawing from global insights as well as Goonj’s 27+ years of grassroots work across South Asia, this report examines who gets to speak, which narratives dominate, and what critical perspectives are left out.
More importantly, it establishes a new benchmark for holistic, community-led, and multi-stakeholder disaster narrative building—moving away from traditional top-down framing and toward an approach where impacted communities lead in defining their own recovery, needs, and futures.
During this interactive launch and discussion, we will:
Examine the global state of disaster stories, analyzing key narrative angles, represented voices, and existing systemic gaps.
Define a new benchmark for community-led and multi-stakeholder narrative frameworks that drive dignified, effective response and long-term resilience.
Explore practical pathways for integrating first-person community agency into global climate and disaster media.
This convening is ideal for:
Media Professionals & Journalists – Storytellers, editors, and newsrooms aiming to reframe disaster coverage toward agency, dignity, and local leadership.
Researchers & Academics – Scholars documenting climate adaptation, crisis communications, and community resilience models.
Global Foundations & Philanthropic Leaders – Funders interested in shifting narrative power and supporting locally led climate action.
Social Sector Leaders & Policy Advocates – Practitioners seeking to realign disaster response strategies with ground-level realities.
Ecosystem Enablers & Collaborators – Institutional leaders building cross-sector coalitions for systemic change.
This session takes place in conjunction with Disasters: Myths and Realities: an exhibition of photographs by Anshu Gupta over the last 27+ years of Goonj standing alongside communities through various climate disasters—including the Gujarat earthquake, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the COVID-19 migration, and more recently, the 2026 floods across India. The exhibition invites participants to reflect and participate in rethinking resilience, dignity, and community-centered approaches to disaster response.
This session is part of All Hands on Deck: Co-Designing Climate Resilience 🌏
A day-long convening hosted by The Goonj Foundation and BASACA (Bay Area South Asian Climate Association) during Climate Week NYC 2026, bringing together 100 selected global funders, venture capitalists, founders, philanthropists and adaptation leaders. Join us as we explore how community-led models and local adaptation models can define, direct and scale emergency response globally.
The most effective adaptation solutions are being designed on the frontlines, by communities who know the risk intimately. The most investable ones are coming out of founders across the US–South Asia corridor. And the capital that could connect the two sits in a third room entirely. Everyone is working the same problem from a different end, and almost never at the same table. That gap is the opportunity. Hundred people, one room, one day: to use community-led design can shape South Asia’s climate resilience solutions.
Whether you are a founder, investor, researcher, non-profit, media professional or policymaker and working on climate resilience, this is the room you need to be in for NY Climate Week.
Browse the full day and register for the other sessions: https://luma.com/allhandsondeck
Hosted by:
THE GOONJ FOUNDATION: A US organization inspired by Goonj, a pioneering non-profit transforming disaster response and climate adaptation across India into a dignity-driven, community-led movement. Goonj leverages local wisdom, grassroots participation, and institutional frameworks like SARRD (Societal Alliance for Resilience and Response to Disasters) to build sustainable, long-term resilience.
BASACA (Bay Area South Asian Climate Association): A global community uniting South Asian leaders across business, academia, science, arts, climate, and activism to foster collaboration, amplify impact, and drive systems change.