Share Your Story

You will share your story by talking with an interviewer about the disaster you lived through. Before this interview happens, you and your interviewer will have a meeting. At this pre-interview meeting, you will work together to decide the main questions you will be asked during that interview. You and your interviewer will also decide where it will take place. Your interviewer will record this meeting to make sure the questions asked during that interview are the same as the ones you agreed on. You can ask for a copy of that recording. Your interviewer will also give you a list of the questions you decided on. You can review that list before the interview.

During the interview, your interviewer may ask you to talk more about some of your answers. These are called follow-up questions. You don’t have to answer any question you don’t want to. Most interviews will take between 60-90 minutes. Your interviewer will record this interview. It may be an audio or video recording. Your interviewer or one of our photojournalists will also ask to take photos of you. You may give the interviewer a photo of you or decline to have photos taken.

Your interviewer will type up everything you told them. This creates a transcript. Your interviewer will also write an article that describes what happened to you. That description will only use your exact words from the transcript. That is why it is called an “as-told-to” article. The article will include a short summary of who you are that is written in the interviewer’s words, based on what you told them. Your interviewer will credit you as the article’s co-author. You may give your interviewer personal records about the climate disaster you lived through that you wish to share. Those records could include photos, social media postings, diary entries, etc.

Your interviewer will give you copies of the interview recording, transcript, and “as told-to” article. You can fix errors in the article and interview transcript. You can also add information you forgot. And you can remove information that makes you feel uncomfortable. You will have 14 days to make these changes. We can’t make changes to the interview recording. That’s because the Climate Disaster Project needs an exact record of what was said during your interview, rather than what you meant to say.

Your “as-told-to” article, and photo will be published or broadcast with one of our news media or cultural partners. We will let you know at least two weeks before this happens. You will then have a week to let us know if you would like to make any more changes or leave the project. Your interview transcript, “as-told-to” article, and photo will also be made available via a public archive. With your permission, we will share the full recording of your interview, which may include information you changed or removed from your transcript, at a time of your choosing.