The Higher Ground Project was a worldwide campaign to celebrate the lives of children who survived the tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.
At its heart was an anthology of short stories, Higher Ground (ed Anuj Goyal), written by sixteen best-selling children's authors, including Michael Morpurgo, Steve Voake and Eoin Colfer, and based on children who survived the tsunami. There was also an audiobook version of the anthology, with dramatised readings of these stories by Val Kilmer, James Nesbitt, Meera Syal, Sean Bean, Stephen Fry and Dawn French, amongst others, with music by Nitin Sawhney.
The Project was organised in aid of UNICEF, Save the Children, Handicap International, Y Care International and SOS Children. Online educational resources were also built for teachers in schools and colleges.
Soft-launched at the Cheltenham Festival, the Project was more later formally launched at the Woburn Gallery in London. Published by Chrysalis Children's Books, the book and CD sold out of its first print-run within the first month of publication, leading to a second run. Former United States President and United Nations Envoy for Tsunami Recovery Bill Clinton sent his best wishes in recognition of the project.
A tsunami is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are in turn generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water from a large event.
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism". Jay Rosen offers a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." The underlying principle of citizen journalism is that ordinary people, not professional journalists, can be the main creators and distributors of news. Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists; collaborative journalism, which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together; and social journalism, which denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism.
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700, with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2. The megathrust earthquake involved the Juan de Fuca Plate from mid-Vancouver Island, south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as northern California. The length of the fault rupture was about 1,000 kilometers, with an average slip of 20 meters (66 ft).
On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1–9.3 Mw struck with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known by the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, was caused by a rupture along the fault between the Burma Plate and the Indian Plate, and reached a Mercalli intensity up to IX in some areas.
Dennis Spooner was an English television writer and script editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s. He had long-lasting professional working relationships with a number of other British screenwriters and producers, notably Brian Clemens, Terry Nation, Monty Berman and Richard Harris, with whom he developed several programmes. Though he was a contributor to BBC programmes, his work made him one of the most prolific writers of televised output from ITC Entertainment.
The Vault of Horror was an American bi-monthly horror comic anthology series published by EC Comics in the early 1950s. Along with Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear, it formed a trifecta of popular EC horror anthologies. The Vault of Horror hit newsstands with its April/May 1950 issue and ceased publication with its December/January 1955 issue, producing a total of 40 issues.
"Water is for Washing" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in Argosy. It is based on the premise that an earthquake had catastrophically shattered the range of alluvial deposits separating the Imperial Valley from the Gulf of California, precipitating a tsunami moving north to transiently drown these lowlands.
Food for Life Global is a non-profit vegan food relief organization founded in 1995 to serve as the headquarters for Food for Life projects. Food for Life Global has its roots in ISKCON dating back to 1974. It is a completely independent non-profit organization that supports the work of Food for Life projects both inside and outside of ISKCON. Its network of 291 affiliates span the globe, with projects occupying over 65 countries. Volunteers provide over 1 million free meals daily. Food For Life engages in various sorts of hunger relief, including outreach to the homeless, provision for disadvantaged children throughout India, and provision for victims of natural disasters around the world.
Steven Savile is a British fantasy, horror and thriller writer and editor living in Sweden. His published work includes novels and numerous short stories in magazines and anthologies.
Davenant International is the innovative student forum on global issues launched by the students of Davenant Foundation School in Loughton, Essex, England. This new forum was launched in September 2005 and received widespread media coverage. Davenant Foundation School was founded in 1680 by the Reverend Ralph Davenant. It is a Christian Ecumenical School. Ralph Davenant was passionate about social justice, he had a heart for the poor, hence the fact that he left everything he had to the poor in Whitechapel in the East End of London. The Rector bequeathed a handsome legacy for the education of forty boys and thirty girls of the parish in 'reading, writing and the casting of accounts.' You didn't have to go far to come across the poor in the time of Ralph Davenant – the almshouses were situated close by in Whitechapel Road.
Simeulue is an island of Indonesia, 150 kilometres (93 mi) off the west coast of Sumatra. It covers an area of 1,754 square kilometres, including minor offshore islands. It had a population of 80,674 at the 2010 census and 92,865 at the 2020 census. The official estimate as at mid 2021 was 93,762. Its capital is Sinabang.
The 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake occurred on July 9, 1958 at 22:15:58 PST with a moment magnitude of 7.8 to 8.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). The strike-slip earthquake took place on the Fairweather Fault and triggered a rockslide of 30 million cubic meters and about 90 million tons into the narrow inlet of Lituya Bay, Alaska. The impact was heard 80 kilometers (50 mi) away, and the sudden displacement of water resulted in a megatsunami that washed out trees to a maximum elevation of 524 meters at the entrance of Gilbert Inlet. This is the largest and most significant megatsunami in modern times; it forced a re-evaluation of large-wave events and the recognition of impact events, rockfalls, and landslides as causes of very large waves.
The Aceh Tsunami Museum, located in Banda Aceh, Aceh, Indonesia, is a museum designed as a symbolic reminder of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami disaster, as well as an educational center and an emergency disaster shelter in case the area is ever hit by a tsunami again.
Damodar Mauzo is an Indian short story writer, novelist, critic and script writer in Konkani. He was awarded the 57th Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honour, in 2022, Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his novel Karmelin and the Vimala V. Pai Vishwa Konkani Sahitya Puraskar award for his novel Tsunami Simon in 2011. His collection of Short stories Teresa's Man and Other Stories from Goa was nominated for the Frank O'Connor International award in 2015. He has served as a member of the executive board, general council, as well as the finance committee of the Sahitya Akademi.
James Berry, OBE, Hon. FRSL, was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often "explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards". As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing.
Dhuvaafaru is an inhabited island of Maldives located in the eastern edge of Raa Atoll. Resettlement of the island started on 14 December 2008 to inhabit the displaced residents of Kandholhudhoo who were the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
Running Wild is a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo first published in 2009. It recounts the adventures of a boy who has to survive in the Indonesian jungle after being rescued from a tsunami by an elephant.
The Billion Tree Tsunami was a tree plantation drive launched in 2014, by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in response to the challenge of global warming. Pakistan's Billion Tree Tsunami restores 350,000 hectares of forests and degraded land to surpass its Bonn Challenge commitment. The project aimed at improving the ecosystems of classified forests, as well as privately owned waste and farm lands, and therefore entails working in close collaboration with concerned communities and stakeholders to ensure their meaningful participation through effectuating project promotion and extension services. The project was completed in August 2017, ahead of schedule.
Higher Ground Productions, also known simply as Higher Ground, is an American production company founded in 2018 by former United States President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Okawa Elementary School was an educational institution in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The school was destroyed in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. 74 of its 108 students, who had been sheltering in the school on the instructions of their teachers rather than evacuating to higher ground, were killed as it ran up the nearby Kitakami River. Only four of the students present when the tsunami struck the school survived. Ten of the school's eleven teachers also died. It was found that the school was unprepared for such an event, and that the scale of the tsunami had not been realized until it was too late.