This plan assumes you start about a year before camp, which is what year one’s leaders recommend.
Weeks 1–2: Find your generators. Gather five to eight people from education, emergency management and industry. The 2026 director started with a handful of energetic agency staff he called “the generators” and pulled them into one room. Show them the article “How the Ready2Respond model works” and its opening video. Ask who is in.
Weeks 3–4: Whiteboard your week. The 2026 planners sketched the week on small whiteboards: what each day, each village and each team could look like. Decide your hazard, villages and site options, and what students will build and for whom. Test every idea the way they did: how realistic is it, who do we know, where do we get it, and do we chase it or drop it?
Weeks 5–8: Lock the foundations. Secure the education sponsor and the site. Open the fiscal home. Start the memorandum of understanding. Meet weekly, name the remaining gaps each week, and give each gap an owner.
Weeks 6–10: Make the asks. Brief funders and industry using the one-pager and the industry letter, and ask each grant-maker about its funding cycle. Recruit lead educators for each village through your existing CTE networks.
Weeks 9–12: Build the structure. Draft the Incident Action Plan and the org chart. Name the section chiefs and bring them into planning. Assign every line of the camp management task list. Set the go/no-go date.
Get help. Contact the Team Oregon Build and Ready2Respond team for current templates and to connect with the year-one planners. Many of them asked to stay involved, and the year-one media teacher has offered to help coach new communications teams.