In Papua New Guinea, the first responders to climate and security shocks are local: communities, churches, grassroots groups and the wantok networks of mutual support, now stretched by the scale and frequency of shocks. The problem is less a lack of local capacity than a disconnection: climate finance flows top-down, through channels designed with little understanding of how resilience works locally, and of the complexity of land, kinship and belonging. Our 2025 report, built on interviews and a participatory workshop in Port Moresby, asks what it would take to build from the bottom up instead.