10/28/2024
I'd like to share something with with y'all if I may....
Hello to our friends, family, and those we’ve yet to meet.
My name is Sean, I'm the founder of Venture Unknown. If I may, I’d like to borrow a moment of your time to tell you a little about who we are and what’s in our hearts. An overlanding group by the name of Venture Unknown was founded in 2020 in Greenville, SC without fully knowing what it might become and certainly not knowing the genuine love we were about to discover. Our guiding principles are Explore. Educate, and Encourage. What began as a way to share a common passion for the outdoors through adventure travel has now grown into a community of 6,500 members strong! For fun, we love to overland, camp with families, and discover our beautiful world in countless ways.
We discovered that Venture Unknown is much more than an overlanding group. From the start, we’ve felt a deep connection not only to nature but also to the communities we visit. Every chance we get, we rally our members to help those in need and leave forests and towns better than we found them. This effort takes many forms. It has come from raising money for tornado victims, creating large food drives, helping our veterans, and being good stewards to our forest. To date our community has helped remove over 200,000 lbs of trash from our public lands. Yet I don't think any of us knew all this would lead us to one of the worst disasters some of us have ever witnessed.
That brings us to the present and why we have found ourselves on GoFundMe
On September 26th, Hurricane Helene made landfall and devastated communities in its path. On September 30th, We faced a choice: to act or stay out of the way. I personally couldn’t choose the latter. So I loaded ten 5-gallon jugs of fuel, six cases of water, and three chainsaws into my Land Cruiser and set off for Black Mountain, NC. My plan was simply to help a friend or two. By day four, semi-trucks loaded with supplies, heavy equipment, helicopters with medical supplies, and hundreds of volunteers were at the VU base camp. Compassionate, generous people from all over arrived, ready to do whatever it took to ease the pain felt in Western North Carolina. By the fourth day, my small team and I were exhausted, hitting a wall. In that moment, a group of skilled individuals leaped into action, organizing and managing the effort. We were no longer operating single-handedly; now we had a TEAM! Over 500 missions—well checks, supply deliveries—were efficiently carried out to reach hard-hit communities. We wanted to ensure no one felt forgotten.
The two weeks in Black Mountain were fast-paced and fueled by love, compassion, and adrenaline. We then moved our base to a farm in Little Switzerland, NC, scaling down our mission to focus on getting warm supplies, generators, fuel, propane, medical items, and anything else we could source to the communities in need. We even built a few footbridges to help people cut off from supply access. It was inspiring to witness! After one of our projects the team returned to deliver a birthday cake to a local 81-year-old woman who was overjoyed at our visit. Just recently, we delivered almost 1,000 gallons of fuel to a community near the Cane River. There are hundreds of similar stories our team now carry with them and we can only pray we made a small difference in the people's life we have come in contact with. We will continually stay in contact with communities to ensure they know they’re not forgotten in the coming months. Tons of donations have been delivered to places that will help WNC in the coming cold months.
What now?
A common sentiment we’ve heard throughout this experience is, “This has been life-changing.”
During the past few weeks, we developed a project management tool for disaster relief, taking us out of the days of index cards and Post-Its, which often fell heavily on one person. This tool will, if needed, be used for future disaster responses, and we want to be ready! In the coming months, our team will begin training, recruiting, and writing operational procedures.
We also are all excited to announce a new 501(c)(3) will be created from all this momentum! We have a meeting with our lawyer in November, who is helping us pro bono.
How can you help?
We’ve gathered critical assets that could be deployed to the next disaster. We need a permanent home for this equipment, and we feel a mobile disaster relief command center would be ideal. During recent events, we struggled without a designated space, so a trailer equipped and ready to go would be a blessing. Currently, everything is boxed in a small enclosed trailer, which isn’t ideal for this purpose. We’re starting this GoFundMe in hopes of finding a suitable home for our operation. I’ve priced trailers similar to what I feel we need, and they range from $10,000 to much higher. We already have a truck to tow it and would be overjoyed to have a proper mobile command center that would symbolize this new path. This tool will be indispensable in saving lives when our team reunites for future missions. We promise to keep donors updated and hope you’ll follow our progress. I’m always open to sharing more about our vision and what we’ve accomplished. Through this experience, I’ve seen strangers unite and literally move mountains for others. Political sides were irrelevant. We united in love, compassion, and empathy.
Thank you for taking the time to read our story. I only ask one thing: if you choose to donate, please don’t overextend yourself. Our motto is “Many hands make small work.” We will meet our goal, or we’ll adapt and overcome!
Hello to friends, family, and those we’ve yet to meet. My name i… Sean Clark needs your support for Support Venture Unknown's Mobile Disaster Command Center
