Happy 15th Birthday Dear World

Once upon a time, a Harvard student who loved New Orleans as much as I did invited me to a conference he was organizing. It was the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, one of those gatherings where bright students and accomplished adults talk about how they might change the world. His name was Jonah. We hatched a plan. We'd find a way to launch Dear World at the conference. The plan worked. I opened the conference with a keynote and spent the weekend photographing more than 500 people with their messages to the world. Before the closing session, the conference co-chair, Emily, asked me when and where Dear World began. I smiled and admitted we had fibbed a little. That we’d only been doing this in New Orleans until that day. “Wait,” she said, smiling back, “so you’re launching it here?” “Yes,” I told her. A few minutes later, she walked on stage and proudly announced the launch of Dear World. I was 27, with beautiful dreams about what might come next. More than one million stories and a whole lot of markers later, I'm here to report Next has been nothing short of magical. We've been with you for intense and special life moments. Wedding reception booths, funeral program covers. Two strangers wrote on each other, exchanged numbers, went on a date, got married and now have a baby. One guy even sent me a photo of his actual tattoo. He didn't wipe the marker off, he just went straight to the tattoo parlor and had them trace the message. I've misspelled or corrected more i before e's except after c's than I'd like to admit--for all of our sakes. I’ve hugged survivors, cried with families, and yes, caused a few minor international incidents. Thank you to everyone who has ever given me a stage, a moment, or a smile. Here’s to the next 15 years of sharing stories. Take a look at https://www.robertxfogarty.com/ to see what I’ve been up to. Sincerely, Robert X. Fogarty