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OVERALL UPDATES
In FY 2024–25, IDR worked on driving an understanding of climate interconnectedness in the social sector as part of the grant:** -
Publishing insights by academic experts, and people with lived experience of the climate crisis.
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Demystifying climate science and terms through explainers, humour, jargon busters
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Helping make sense of the climate crisis. How does climate change affect the people that nonprofits and funders work with? We highlighted the interconnectedness of climate change with all thematic areas that funders, nonprofits, and governments are invested in.
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Focusing on social media distribution. We explored ways to popularise and mainstream the climate conversation, from running engaging campaigns to tapping into trending formats and conversations.
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Integrating a climate-focused lens into the Northeast fellowship. This enabled communicators to focus on capturing different aspects, beyond conventional coverage on a topic. This also brought forward stories from a region that often receives less climate coverage.
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PROGRESS ON THE GOALS LISTED WHILE ONBOARDING
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In FY 2024–25, of the 322 stories published on IDR, 73 stories featured climate and environmental issues, either standalone or in intersection with other issues.
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Our coverage spanned the Himalayan north, the Northeast, coastal regions, and urban centres, with a focus on amplifying stories and contributions from authors of diverse identities and backgrounds. We used hyperlocal stories, photo essays, videos, opinion pieces, and explainers to engage different audiences. Approximately 22% of articles were translated into Hindi.
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In June 2024, we launched our Northeast Fellowship with three fellows from Nagaland, Mizoram, and Tripura, expanding IDR’s regional coverage. One in four articles produced through the fellowship focused on climate, sustainability, and environmental issues.
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Under the grant requirements, the Hindi editorial team lead was onboarded to oversee IDR’s Hindi coverage. In 2024, the team produced 133 original articles, significantly expanding reach, and grew from 6 to 9 members over the year.
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CHALLENGES: While our climate narrative work has grown geographically, we’re now working to deepen it by including more nonprofits from the south and expanding translations into regional languages.
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Any new avenues of collaboration (with other Grantees of RCF or other NPO/NGO): We’ve been in conversation with Dasra and Momentum Shifts to explore how IDR can contribute to the ongoing narrative-building work.
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Highlights from the initiatives being undertaken as part of your organization:
- Mainstreaming the climate conversation:
In FY 2024–25, of the 322 stories published on IDR, 73 stories featured climate and environmental issues, either standalone or in intersection with other issues. Our editorial focus was on showcasing the country’s diverse climate realities while bringing the conversation closer to people’s everyday lives. This included:
Diverse and effective climate narratives
Our coverage spanned the Himalayan north, Northeast, coastal belts, and urban centres, with a particular emphasis on ensuring stories and contributions from people with varied identities. We used hyperlocal stories, photo essays, videos, opinion pieces, and explainers to engage different audiences. Approximately 22% of articles were translated into Hindi.
- Capacity strengthening for the sector
IDR’s coverage:
- Unpacked complex issues such as carbon markets, coastal commons, loss and damage funds, waste-to-energy plants, and renewable energy transitions, while highlighting equity concerns around large projects like solar parks.
- Tracked shifts across stakeholders, from changes in philanthropic priorities to evolving approaches by civil society, media, and researchers in addressing the climate crisis.
- Shared insights from philanthropy and the social sector, including trends in climate funding, systems-thinking approaches for funders, inclusive communication strategies, and the role of emotions in campaigns.
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Highlighting community-led place-based solutions: We looked at existing community-driven place-based innovations, such as thrifting practices in Nagaland, and how community-led energy audits helped households in a region in Ahmedabad reduce their energy consumption through simple, sustainable solutions that save money and electricity.
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Overall, our coverage highlighted how climate change is affecting everyday life—from deteriorating air quality, food, and health, to livelihoods and the growing recurrence of extreme weather events. We also brought forward solutions and narratives often absent from mainstream discourse, reflecting the vastness and diversity of India’s climate story.
Northeast media fellowship: The first cohort of the IDR NE Fellowship began in June 2024, with three fellows from Nagaland, Mizoram, and Tripura. Over the course of the year, the fellows engaged and produced a diverse range of written and multimedia stories focusing on climate and environmental themes relevant to their regions. One in four articles published as part of the NE Fellowship focused on themes of climate, sustainability, and the environment.
Capacity building: As part of the grant requirements, Rajika Seth was onboarded to lead our Hindi editorial team and oversee Hindi-language coverage. In 2024, the Hindi team produced 133 original articles, significantly expanding IDR’s reach. Over the past year, the team also grew from 6 members to
- Outcomes you are chasing for the next 6 months (these can remain the same if unchanged since the last update)
- Deepen intersectional knowledge on climate by making it more relatable and connected to people’s daily realities, as well as to the core work of the social sector, whether in education, gender, health, or beyond.
- Expand regional language content, building on the emerging but still nascent vocabulary around climate in Hindi. We will continue to strengthen this and begin exploring other languages such as Gujarati, Bengali, and Marathi, given the clear gap and growing interest.
- Support capacity building by identifying what the social sector needs to engage more effectively with the climate conversation, and creating responses to those needs.
- Identify gaps in mainstream media coverage on climate, and explore ways IDR can fill or complement those gaps.
- KPIs (please use this section to let us know of the impact and reach of your work since the last update)
- In FY 2024–25, IDR reached 216 million people and 21.4 million engagements across all its channels. IDR English reached 147 million people, with 13 million engagements. Meanwhile, IDR Hindi achieved a reach of 69 million on its website, with 8.4 million engagements.
- IDR’s climate coverage constituted approximately 23% percent of the total coverage on the English platform
- Approximately 25% of articles produced as part of the Northeast media fellowship were climate and environment focused.
- Approximately 22% of articles were translated to Hindi and other languages such as Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati.
- Contributors who published on climate issues on IDR benefited from increased visibility, access to funding, expansion of peer networks, citizen engagement and opening of new markets, among others. A key outcome was also the increased confidence of grassroots contributors in their own lived experience and expertise, and being viewed as experts both in their communities as well as wider audiences.
- INR 73,000 was disbursed from IDR’s Marginalisation Fund across 20 climate stories. The fund supports contributors from marginalised identities, such as Scheduled Castes and Tribes, religious minorities, LGBTQIA+ individuals, persons with disabilities, and those from economically or geographically disadvantaged regions. This accounted for 27% of IDR’s total climate coverage.
- Can Rainmatter be of help with anything at all: By doing some learning sessions with our team – what they are seeing, they’re perspective on climates, insights/suprises from their other grantees
9) Please also share any images or videos that you have documented as part of your work
