Monthly Update - What happens when the War Ends? Stories You Can Listen, Play & Share
A4R 🎨 Monthly - a GenZ co creation.
Ciao Trailblazers,
How is your sweater weather coming along? Hectic isn’t it! Here we did some math to see how well we were doing compared to industry norms. This is what we found -
LinkedIn → Top ~20% of company pages
Facebook→ Top ~15% of company pages
Instagram→3,300+ organic views in the past year, with zero paid promotion
Substack→19,600+ annual email opens. Ave. Open rate per email 30%.
Great news and thank you for all you support and commitment. It’s great to see how engaged you are with our work. Look forward to building on this with you. Be great if you could share our work here with 3 of your friends - we find organic growth is more rewarding, but hard. So, any help along the way is great.
Here we have a new volunteer -
Nicole. Yup, the same Nicole who trained with us to be a Citizen Journalist. She has now completed her Master’s at King’s. She is supporting us with our user feedback, so keep an eye out and say hi if you come across her.
Talking about King’s - more students will be joining us next month. They will be training to be Citizen Journalists and then apply their training to research and write about communities rebuilding themselves after the conflict is over. We ask them to focus on this topic because these communities and their human needs are forgotten in time.
Plus, the Department of War Studies is the largest Security Studies Department in the world with a global reputation. So, the topics they touch on are well informed (Not fake news/ disinformation) and the ones they cover during their courses.
Then in December we have more students from Oxford University joining us. They will focus on identifying refugees from an arty background who made our lives beautiful. In the past they dug up refugees like K’Naan, Freddy Mercury, Gloria Estafan and more.
But even more, they will create micro games for you. So, you can play and learn about the experiences of the arty refugees. This is a unique innovation within journalism we are working on. So, play the games, share your feedback so we can improve them and, of course, share them with your friends.
Our Sponsor for the month
BizGees are the winner’s of the UNICEF FinTech Jam Good - Financial Inclusion Challenge. They use human centered design to create bespoke financial inclusions for communities recovering from conflict. They use alternative finance and web 3 to make financial inclusion the new norm. They also own and run A4R Media Hub 🙂
What happens when the war ends podcasts this month
You can listen and read these stories here. Take your pick and share the ones you enjoyed the most!
Play the stories that changed the world from last month
You can play these stories here. Take your pick and share the ones you enjoyed the most! Our novel approach to using gaming for Journalism has been nominated for the Chroma Awards - thanks to Rosebud.Ai. Look forward to sharing what happens.
Gaming Art NFT of the month 🎨
Click here to learn more about the Anok Yai NFT.
Discover our full NFT collection here featuring your favorite arty refugees.
Owning an NFT gives you:
Exclusive ownership rights
Optional merchandise (tote bags, tees, hoodies, and more)
Collector’s value—you can resell and watch the collection grow
Start your collection now, and share it with friends as a unique, meaningful gift.
The Giving Corner - October focus
Finally, moving into October. The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction is coming up. Climate change, conflict and political turmoil are the biggest causes for displacement today. The theme this year - Fund Resilience, Not Disaster.
You can listen, learn, play, own, wear and share these stories. here. Don’t forget to share your learnings with the others.
ChatGPT thinks these are 3 articles/ podcasts that suit this theme the best. Have listen/ read and let’s see how well they match?
🔍 Top 3 Picks & Why They Fit
“Untold Environmental Harm & Community Upheaval | Sierra Leone’s Peace”
This episode deals with environmental damage, post-conflict recovery, and how communities are forced into unsustainable coping strategies (e.g. deforestation, land degradation) under pressure.)
It speaks directly to interlinked risks (conflict + environmental) and the importance of rebuilding ecological resilience.
“A Glimmer of Resilience: How Ordinary Yemenis Are Rebuilding with Dignity and for a Brighter Future”
Here, the narrative covers critical vulnerabilities—water, hunger, infrastructure breakdown, displacement, health risk—and how communities are attempting local solutions in extreme disaster/humanitarian contexts.
It highlights both the scale of risk and grassroots resilience in a disaster-affected environment.
“Can Mosul Rise Again? A Look at Its Post-ISIS Recovery”
This one describes reconstruction efforts, clearing hazards, restoring essential services (water, sanitation, electricity), and how civilians and local groups mitigate risk in an environment riddled with damage and danger.
It’s a strong example of disaster / post-crisis recovery in a war zone context, which overlaps with disaster risk reduction strategies.
It’s great to have you with us along this journey. You can support our work by “donating us coffee”. More here.
This is a simple way to keep us going — nothing like a dose of caffeine to boost your day! Till next month — enjoy your coffee along the way 😊
With gratitude,
Zufi, KaiWen, Nicole, Michael, & Gerry.
A4R 🎨 Monthly is a user supported publication. Don’t forget to subscribe.