Creating HOPE 2025: “HELENE +1”

A Post-Crisis Learning Exercise for Disaster Preparedness & Resilience

One year after Hurricane Helene devastated Upstate and Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and Southern and Western Georgia, Creating Hope 2025 – “Helene +1” serves as a critical convening of emergency professionals, academics, and student practitioners. This two-day event will examine the cascading effects of the storm, illuminate post-crisis recovery efforts, and prepare attendees to lead in future disasters through actionable learning and cross-sector collaboration.

Event Details

📅 Dates: Friday–Saturday, November 7–8, 2025

📍 Locations:

Friday morning:  0830 ET | Hartness Pavilion at Furman University | 3300 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, SC. 

Lunch: Student Dining Hall (in the same building as the Pavilion)

Friday Afternoon: 1330 ET | Furman Innovation Lab at Flywheel Co-working | 25 Goldsmith St, Greenville, SC. 

Should any questions come up regarding finding locations on Friday, please call Clemson Turregano at 336-929-0629. 

Saturday Morning:  0800 ET | Spartanburg County Emergency Management Office | 175 Community College Drive, Spartanburg, SC.

Why This Matters

On September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene tore through the Carolinas, leaving behind:

• $370M in emergency and infrastructure damage across South Carolina

• 49 lives lost in SC, 107 in NC

• 27+ tornadoes and over 30 inches of rain in NC alone, causing $59.6B in damage

Helene exposed critical gaps in regional preparedness. Creating Hope 2025 asks:

• What have we learned after a year of response, recovery, and analysis?

• What preparedness and response gaps did Helene and the July 2025 Guadalupe River disaster in Texas highlight?  

• What must change in local, state, federal, and community preparedness and response before the next storm hits? 

Agenda

Day 1 – Friday, 7 November

Helene +1 and Beyond at the Hartness Pavilion, Furman University

• 0830

  Doors Open / Coffee & Breakfast Snacks

• 0900

  Welcomes:  Greenville City Council:  Liz Seman; CHSE:  BG (Ret) Mark Corson PhD.

• 0915

  Conference Overview – Executive Director, CREATING HOPE 25

• 0930

  Opening of Café Helene:  A boundary spanning exercise in sharing lessons forward. 

• 1030

  Networking & Coffee Break

• 1100

  Helene Café – Lessons Learned and Lessons Forward

• 1200

  Lunch at the Dining Hall

   

  EVENT MOVES TO FURMAN INNOVATION LAB @ FLYWHEEL CO-WORKING SPACE

   

• 1330

  Panel 1: Preparing Tomorrow’s Emergency Managers

• 1440

  Break

• 1450

  Panel 2: Roles, Importance, and Preparation of Citizen Emergency Responders

• 1600

  Break 

• 1610

  Panel 3: Impacts of Helene and Disasters on Responders and Communities

• 1720

  Closing of Day 1/Final Admin updates and Evaluations

• 1720

  Social Hour / Networking Reception @ Flywheel

Day 2 – Saturday

• 0800

  Virtual EOC Simulation: Interactive emergency operations exercise using real-world scenarios

• 1115

  Facilitated Discussion: Reflection and strategic insight exchange

Logistics

💵 Planning Fee: $50 per participant (covers snacks, breaks, materials)
🚗 Travel & Lodging: Participants are responsible for transportation and housing. Off-site housing will be arranged for staff and faculty as needed.

This isn’t just a conference. It is a call to action—to build smarter systems, tighter networks, and stronger communities before the next disaster strikes.

This event is hosted by the Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education (CHSE), known for its immersive, hands-on training that blends academic insight with operational realism.

Abstract Submission is Closed for 2025, but please consider submitting next year!

Please submit abstracts no later than 22 August 2025. CHSE will aim to make final selections by 15 September 2025.

We are excited to solicit abstracts from practitioners, academia, and students in any field related to domestic or international disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. This year, we are focusing on lessons learned from Hurricane Helene and other recent disasters that can be used to improve preparedness and response operations and training practices.

Event Registration will be released soon. Please monitor the email you have registered with CHSE or check back here for the announcement and submission details!

Creating Humanitarian Opportunities for Professionals and Educators

Creating HOPE is a conference and information-sharing event produced by CHSE. It brings together practitioners, academic experts, students, and community members for discussion, research, and information sharing across a variety of topics related to domestic and international disaster resilience and humanitarian operations, simulation-based training design and implementation, and emerging issues in those fields. CreatingHOPE also serve as a planning session for various Hope Exercises, and a venue for in-person meetings of the Board of Directors.