Co-designing symbols of resilience with global communities and local plants
In May 2026, GNDR - Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction, reached out with an invitation to design the document for their next 5 years Strategy. Instead of designing from our own references, we found a way to co-create with the members of the network from all over the world.
GNDR is the largest international network of civil society organisations working to strengthen resilience and reduce disaster risk in communities worldwide. It connects more than 2,000 organisations, many of them grassroots, local, and indigenous community groups rooted in the places they serve.
Why a new strategy:
The global disaster risk agreements are ending, while more frequent climate disasters are putting more communities at risk.
The Ask
GNDR was seeking a partner to design their Global Strategy 2026–2030. The GNDR 2026–2030 strategy focuses on acting and learning together under pressure, and how global solidarity can help communities grow through local, inclusive leadership.
The design needed to communicate community leadership, solidarity,
interconnectedness, and resilience while reflecting the diversity of GNDR's global membership. The team had identified the metaphor of the mycelium, an underground interconnected web of communication and exchange among plants and trees. GNDR's central idea is the tree, roots, and interconnected systems of life through collaboration.
Our approach to the ask
Rather than illustrate a single universal image or come up with our own creativity, we decided to interrogate the members of the network and find out what resilience looked like in the ecosystem surrounding them. What web of life would be the best metaphor to support the idea of acting and learning together?
We asked:
What plant, tree, or landscape is meaningful in your context, and what does it tell us about resilience where you live? Send us a simple picture or the name of the plant, and we will integrate it into our design.
We received hundreds of images and answers.
With all these contributions, we built a visual language that reflected the diversity and strength of all the places and people the GNDR network is made of.
We responded to a question and a metaphor with hundreds of realities and meanings.
Here are a few of the answers and images we received:
On behalf of Pak Women, we propose the Neem Tree (Azadirachta indica) thriving in harsh drought, heat, and poor soils while providing shade, healing, and protection to communities. It mirrors those facing climate change, disasters, poverty, and exclusion, yet continuing to adapt, recover, and support one another. The Neem embodies strength, endurance, regeneration, and hope, its deep roots reflecting communities working toward a safer, inclusive, sustainable future.
Azra Gul, Executive Director, Pak Women, Pakistan.
Representing Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, the choice is clear: the Acacia tree (locally Girar in Amharic) is the ultimate symbol of resilience in our semi-arid lowland region. It thrives in harsh, unforgiving, moisture-stressed climates where little else survives; its deep roots hold our soil together against erosion. Its expansive canopy has historically served as a traditional community marketplace and courthouse, where elders gather to resolve conflicts and make decisions.
Mr. Wondwossen Amsalu Misrak, Co-founder & Director, Synergy for Community Development (SCD), Ethiopia.
A few of the 100 images sent to us from the GNRD Network
As our work consistently invites indigenous voices, we invited Indigenous artists and designers from our network to create illustrations to be used on the cover page of every chapter. Each illustration interprets a plant from specific local cultural knowledge and relationship to place, adding depth and multiple perspectives to the strategy.
Everything converged in a document that felt alive and connected to the many people who had sent us pictures, anecdotes, and cultural explanations.
This is the Cover of the Strategy, where we brought together, in a composition, some pictures of the network members. The background of lines is a reference to the Mycelium - the web of connections of the network, places, and knowledge.
Peace plant, Artwork by Leonel Ayafor Ngwa, Bafut Community, Cameroon.
“In my hometown, you find this plant in nearly every big home. It symbolizes peace for those in the house and those entering it. My grandfather always advised me to take a piece of the plant whenever I was travelling, as a symbol of a safe and peaceful journey.
We created pictograms using photos of the network members to better reflect the values .
On this page, plants, animals, and other symbols of resileince shared by the network members became pictograms.
This project reinforced design principles and engagements we apply everywhere, and any organisation pursuing equitable, community-led climate action can use:
Challenge simplified views: The single most important move was asking members what resilience looks like where they live and building from their answers, not our references. Communities don't need their realities interpreted for them; they need space to name them.
Embrace interconnection - Understand and act as entangled with the land. A single symbolic tree would have been faster. But hundreds of plants, each rooted in a real place and story, reflected the network far more honestly and made the contributors part of the final document.
Decolonize: Traditional and Indigenous knowledge as expertise. Inviting Indigenous artists to shape chapter illustrations gave their knowledge systems a structural place in the strategy itself. We give thanks to the GNDR team, network members, our indigenous and traditional partners, artists and designers involved in this powerful project.
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