I’ll admit—submitting proposals to conferences can be a bit tedious and uninspired.
Not this year.
I am thrilled that the committee for ACA New England accepted my proposal and I’m going to give you a bit of a behind the scenes look at my proposal.
Because I need your help.
Here’s the proposal:
Camp’s Role in Disaster Emergency Management
Hurricane Helene devastated the mountains of Western North Carolina in Fall 2024. Many area camps promptly served as hubs for the community and emergency response officials while infrastructure was rebuilt. Six months later, wildfires plagued these same areas and camps found themselves again playing a key role in emergency response. Whether you are camp with a facility or a mobile program, join Ruby for a closer look at how summer camps can serve in the aftermath of natural disasters and how to plan to take on this role in an ever-more volatile climate.
Why does this feel particularly inspiring? After seeing some of the incredible work around here in WNC post-hurricane in September 2024 and again when we had wildfires in March 2025, I know there are programs who went above and beyond to offer what they could and I want to highlight those stories for other camp pros. I'm hoping this will come together as a magazine article for Camping Magazine as well.
I know some stories and have already reached out to a few camps about the extraordinary work they were doing during these hard times, but I know there are more stories. I want to tell them. Not just tell them, but highlight them and showcase to the the camp community what an incredible impact you have.
To be clear, this is not a money maker for me. The goal here is lift up these stories that many of my friends have simply been to busy to tell. Here in WNC, for some, it felt like a real struggle to get to Summer 2025 because we kept getting hit after hit—and everybody else’s pain seemed so much worse than our own—so we didn’t always share our little wins. It was just expected. We took care of our neighbors and we offered what we had.
However, at this moment in time, I’m a firm believer that the world needs a strong reminder of the importance of caring for their neighbors and what a resource summer camp is in tough times.
While camp people get it, so many folks who don’t understand or know summer camp still see us as under shroud of mystery and sometimes even cynicism.
Here I am, humbly asking you to share—no, actually, I’m asking you to ferociously not-so-humblebrag—about what you have done anytime in your camp’s history to support others during natural disaster emergency response. You can fill out the survey here and if you want to schedule a follow up call, I’ll be doing specific reach outs between now and February 10.