ABSTRACT
The central research question of how transformative education in emergency preparedness utilizing community and participatory media platforms can become a tool to create “safer communities” while promoting empowerment is addressed in this chapter. Related to this is the question of how the learning experience itself can transform the communities involved in this work into zones of empowerment and self-determination, enabling the preservation of what is important to the residents in the face of a rapidly changing world. In this way, the proactive process that the communities in this research have undertaken could be considered to be a form of constructive resilience. An explanation of participatory research in the context of the Eastern Path of Renewal, the chosen research path within the Integral Worlds, and how it relates to this particular research is provided.
An onward and upward spiral is employed to describe the unique advantage of using narrative methods and its importance in understanding the research ecosystem and how it is dynamically impacted by emergency. Storytelling and oral history is integral to the culture of the communities of Uttarakhand, therefore methods that capitalize on ways of expressing truth through subjective experience were chosen.
