Looking Beyond Disaster Toolkit

The Looking Beyond Disaster Toolkit was created to support young people who want to enhance the disaster resilience of their communities.

The toolkit has been designed in support of youth-led solutions to our local, national, regional and global disaster challenges both now and into the future.

It is based on lessons from the Looking Beyond Disaster Youth Forum series that began in Christchurch in 2011. The initial Forum, organised by the National Commission in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, brought together 100 young people from 19 countries in Asia-Pacific, to discuss youth responses to natural disasters.

The toolkit supports the sharing of stories and lessons learnt through experiences of natural disasters and promotes the development of new disaster risk reduction initiatives.

The Toolkit is written by youth, for youth.

In an increasingly diverse and connected world, the nature and complexity of challenges facing our global population is constantly changing. Time and time again young people step forward to engage in community responses to disasters. They are critical in efforts to find sustainable solutions.

Youth are some of the most creative, technologically capable and enthusiastic people on earth. And this incredible resource is needed – it has been estimated that globally since 2005, more than $1.5 billion people have been affected by disasters in various ways, with an overall cost of more than $1.3 trillion (and this is prior to Covid-19)

The Looking beyond Disaster initiative and this Toolkit offer the space and modality to engage youth around the world in disaster risk reduction and to unleash their potential positive impact in a meaningful and coherent way.

Watch an overview of the 2011 Looking Beyond Disaster Youth Forum that inspired this toolkit.