Heather Blanchard

I’m not sure how to effectively write a blog to completely explain what the community of CrisisCamp and CrisisCommons have meant to me and my life. In my head I’ve written this blog a million times. Sometimes its really long. Sometimes its really short. But each time I explain my heartfelt thanks to everyone who believes and all those who have contributed to the movement. Because that’s what we were apart of. A movement to change the way disaster response is done. We wanted to connect the right information at the right time and place. We wanted to make and impact. And we did — in so many ways.

So its kind of bittersweet to say farewell because its not like I’m leaving my friendships and all of the great people who I now call my digital family. Its just time to past the reins on to a super smart team who will shape what CrisisCommons can be in the future. It’s the right time. It’s been almost three years since CrisisCamp came to be in my life. But my interest in connecting technology and humanitarian relief and crisis management extended well before then. I would say it was around 2007 when I started thinking about how to make those connections. If you would read my essays trying to go to graduate school (in my late 30s), you would find that I was asking for time to explore that connectivity. Little did I know a few years later I wouldn’t just be writing about it, I was doing it. We were learning. We failed. We had successes. We did so much together. I’m not sure this blog has enough places to list all of the amazing moments and the great things that happened.

But alas, this fall I’ve decide to start to shift to work on a few new projects and am stepping down from my roles at CrisisCommons and CrisisCamp. My heart is heavy but its been almost three years since we began this journey. Just last week I began a new chapter in my life as I moved to Paris. In a way me being here has a lot to do with my experience over the last few years. I’m confident in the great people on the interim team and know they will do great things.

I have a lot of gratitude to all the people who have believed and have helped along the way. I can’t list everyone here because there would be hundreds of people but just know that it was a group effort. And today, it still is that way. Nothing is ever one person. There is a lot of truth in the phrase, “it takes a village.” In our case, it was a global village. People pitching in from all over the world. It’s funny, there was someone who early on told me that, “you can’t do this by yourself, you need someone who has done this before.”  He was very insistent about it. I think about that a lot these days. I’m not sure if he was right or wrong. You can’t go through an experience like this and not learn things. I’ve learned a lot. I am still very passionate about the concept of how people can support crisis management and humanitarian relief efforts by donating their skills, time and talents. I’m not sure where that passion will take me next. I’ll still interested in how brands engage in communities as well. So there might be a bit of both in store for me in the future.

I didn’t want this to be too long. But I wanted to share with you guys how much I appreciated everyone’s support and how grateful I have been to work with everyone to help advance what we all know is the future of crisis management and humanitarian relief.

I won’t be far. You know, this Internet is a small space when you are only a message away. You can email me at heather@newcicada.com and of course I’m on Facebook and Twitter.

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