Bronze Shelter Box award

The Rotary Club of Billericay recognizes the value which Shelter Box provides and that all the money donated goes directly to funding real relief in countries which are so desperate for help in their hours (and months) of need.  We are proud to have contributed even in a small way to helping this effort through the funding of 25 Shelter Boxes.

Shelter Box HQ is based in Cornwall but it has 21 international affiliates globally, all providing emergency shelter and lifesaving supplies for families around the world who are affected by disasters, at the time when they need it the most. 

In the 11 years since ShelterBox was founded, it has responded to almost 200 natural or manmade disasters in over 75 different countries and provided lifesaving aid for well over one million people.

The ShelterBox solution in disaster response is as simple as it is effective.  It delivers the essentials a family needs to survive in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. 

Each large, green ShelterBox is tailored to a disaster but typically contains a disaster relief tent for an extended family, blankets, water storage and filtration equipment, cooking utensils, a stove, a basic tool kit, a children’s activity pack and other vital items.

Shelter Box is now firmly established at the forefront of disaster relief and its work constantly earns the respect of outside agencies.

ShelterBox was founded by Tom Henderson OBE, a Rotarian and former Royal Navy search and rescue diver.  He saw that the aid response to most disasters was in the form of food and medicine to help people survive the immediate aftermath.  Little or no assistance was given in terms of proper shelter to help them through the first few days, weeks and months as they tried to rebuild their lives. ShelterBox was launched to fill that void.  So in 1999, he started researching the idea, sourcing equipment and twisting arms to get the project off the ground. His persistence paid off in April 2000 when ShelterBox was launched and the Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard in Cornwall adopted it as its millennium project. Little did they know that it would become the largest Rotary club project in the world, with an ever-growing number of international affiliates.

The first consignment of 143 boxes was sent to earthquake victims in the Indian state of Gujarat in January 2001. Over the next three years the project matured and by the end of 2004 nearly 2,600 boxes had been dispatched, following 16 major disasters. On 26 December 2004, news came of the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami and ShelterBox faced its most significant challenge, one that would change its course forever. Donations and volunteers poured in and it was able to ramp up its operations on a scale unimaginable just six months earlier.

In 2005 it sent out more than 22,000 boxes, almost 10 times the number it had sent out in the previous three years. Not only was it sending aid to victims of the Tsunami, but it was also able to help those who had lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina in the USA and the massive earthquake that hit the Kashmir region of Pakistan. In just a few short months, ShelterBox had emerged as a major player in the field of international disaster relief.