Its founders designed Ready2Respond to answer three problems at once: communities that are not ready for disaster, employers who cannot find ready workers, and young people whom adults rarely ask to help.
Readiness. Oregon communities have lived through wildfire, flood and ice storm in recent years, and the state plans for a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. The Department of Emergency Management’s Be 2 Weeks Ready program asks every household to be able to manage on its own for at least two weeks after a disaster. “It was inspired by the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake,” said Kayla Thompson, who manages the program, “but really it applies to all those things we experience in Oregon: wildfires, flooding, ice storms.”
Young people, Thompson said, are “just as impacted as adults” when disaster strikes. “But it’s harder because they’re usually not a part of the conversation,” she said. “They’re not a part of the planning.” Preparing them does more than add hands. Talk of earthquakes can frighten students, she said, but the question they ask is almost always what they can do. Answering it eases the fear: “Okay, we talked about this. I know what to do. I can be some help.”
For many 2026 campers, disaster was not hypothetical. Students from Phoenix and Talent, in the Rogue Valley, had watched the 2020 Almeda fire burn through their towns. “It took out a lot of my community,” said Jon, a Phoenix High School builder. “It was a kind of changing moment thing that I need to help these people.” When Taylor asked the opening briefing who had lived through a wildfire, hands went up across the room.
Workforce. Construction, emergency management, public safety, culinary and media employers say they struggle to find young workers who can show up, communicate and work on a team. Cherie Clark, who helped develop Oregon’s employability skills framework, told campers what industry partners had told her: “I could more easily teach someone to weld than I could to teach them to show up on time and ready to work.” Ready2Respond treats the week as a job simulation, with long days, real deadlines and adults who depend on them to finish the work. Justin Eagar, a construction teacher who led a builder village, put it more simply: “They’re learning how to work.”
Team Oregon Build, the coalition behind the camp, was already running the classroom version of the idea, and its industry letter cites two national recognitions in 2025: program of the year from the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals, and a high-quality program designation at the national CTE Vision conference.
Service. The units students build are real, and they go somewhere. Amber Rawson, a recovery chief at the Department of Human Services, has to find shelter and transitional housing for people who lose their homes to disaster. During eastern Oregon’s 2024 fires, she said, Team Oregon Build units arrived “just in time when I needed them.” During camp she was able to tell one of the instructors the story of the man who received them.
That sense of purpose is the point. “I think kids go through life a lot of their time, and they feel like they are recipients of the system,” said Eric Wright of Lane ESD. When they “actually give back and be part of the solution,” he said, “that’s huge,” for how they see themselves and the story they tell about their lives. Seth O’Hare, who led a builder village, said the same thing in builder’s terms: “These will be utilized by someone somewhere. So that’s a great feeling.”
The philosophy underneath. Underneath all three sits a teaching philosophy Taylor repeated all week: listen to learn, learn to teach. Students learn a skill well enough to teach it to the next person, so the knowledge spreads. Taylor also describes a disaster as a shift from “survival mode” to “providing mode”: first take care of yourself, then become someone who can take care of others. He frames it as person A and person B. Person B needs help; person A has the skill and the willingness to give it. “Strive to become the person A in this world,” he tells students.
Asked why he works this way, Taylor recalled middle school students asking why he was so intense. “Because you’re going to be taking care of me someday,” he said he told them. “You’re going to be my nurses, my doctors, my plumber, my electrician.”