One June 21, the Climate Disaster Project was named as a finalist in the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards’ Engagement category. Asparagus has been a proud member of the project since 2022, including publishing a number of its first-person narratives as our Summer/Fall 2022 cover story. We’re thrilled to be named alongside our academic and media partners for our first international award nomination. It seems both surreal and validating to be in the company of powerhouses like Frontline, Le Monde, Al Jazeera English, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, El País, and the Guardian on the list of 2023 finalists.

Here’s how the nomination announcement describes the Climate Disaster Project:

“Involving a network of professors and students at post-secondary institutions in Canada, the Climate Disaster Project is a teaching newsroom that brings the compelling and authentic stories of people in climate disaster–affected communities to the foreground. In its first year, the innovative approach of the Climate Disaster Project used journalism to build empathy, solidarity, and community around climate experiences by sharing the heart-wrenching experiences of survivors from marginalized and Indigenous communities in Western Canada. Students were trained to interview climate disaster survivors, and they often involved the interview subjects themselves in creating questions to produce the most meaningful answers. These oral histories were adapted into ‘as-told-to’ articles. The Climate Disaster Project established local news media partnerships, so the published stories reached wide and diverse audiences.”

The winners of the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards will be announced in September. You can read all of the project narratives published by Asparagus on our dedicated Climate Disaster Project page.