The Asian tsunami disaster dominated every media organisation’s news coverage in the last week of 2004 and during the first few days of 2005. With over 300,000 people killed, thousands gone missing and millions displaced in a dozen countries on the Indian Ocean rim, the event became one of the worst disasters of all time.

But as with every other disaster, the news media’s interest lasted only for a short period. After several days of saturation coverage, news agencies, network television and the online media drifted away to cover other stories. Only a handful of reporters spent more time, trying to find new angles in a very widely covered story on an epic scale.

The story, however, is far from over for millions of affected people and their families. Long after journalists and television cameras have departed, children, women and men will be struggling to recover from the cruel blow the sea delivered unexpectedly on Boxing Day 2004.

In Aceh, Chennai, Galle, Pedang, Phuket and hundreds of other localities that were hit by the tsunami, local people are slowly coming to terms with the impact, and rebuilding their disrupted lives, livelihoods and futures.

We want to cover and tell these stories to the world. We are therefore returning to Asia’s battered coasts to take a closer look at these stories of individual and collective resilience, heroism and recovery.

And we will stay with them for months to come, generating a range of multimedia products which will be distributed across the Asia Pacific region and beyond.