ShelterBox UK and Ireland newsletter 2014 issue 2

NEWSLETTERISSUE 2 2014

I joined ShelterBox a little over a year ago. And what a year this has been, for me personally and for the organisation. Disasters worldwide have tested our ability, our flexibility, even our diplomacy. 2013 saw ShelterBox deploy to 34 different disaster zones. We have continued to respond to the world’s greatest ongoing tragedy, the Syrian conflict. And we have brought help and hope to families whose homes

and livelihoods were literally blown away by one of planet earth’s most violent ever storms, Typhon Haiyan in the Philippines.

You will read in this Newsletter about these high-profile deployments, and the complexity of delivering aid in such challenging conditions. You will also read about other disasters that have barely registered in the media, but where we are equally proud of our ability to offer a helping hand to families on your behalf.

I use the word ‘dynamic’ because, after my first few months of finding out what makes ShelterBox tick, dynamism seems to me to be an over-riding characteristic. It captures energy, drive and enthusiasm, qualities I’ve found here in abundance.

Those in the front line of our aid delivery, and the legions of volunteers, supporters and fundraisers who are the engine house of the ShelterBox machine, are clearly not prepared to stand still. They want to see this wonderful charity constantly moving forward, monitoring and evaluating what it does, reaching out to more and more disaster zones, helping more and more people.

And, let’s be honest. ‘Dynamic’ also has just a hint of the superhero about it, doesn’t it? You can meet some real-life action superheroes on pages 11 and 12, who we are proud to count among our celebrity friends.

I hope you enjoy reading about this dynamic organisation, which exists only because of its true superheroes - generous supporters like you.

Alison Wallace, Chief Executive, ShelterBox

WELCOMEShelterBox is a dynamic organisation. We move forward by learning from each and every deployment, by listening to families affected by disaster and adapting our aid to meet their most urgent needs. And we rigorously train the response teams who deliver it. Dynamism is absolutely in ShelterBox’s DNA.

CONTENTS2

PG 3 Bolivia floodsPG 4 Zimbabwe floodsPG 5 Philippines - Typhoon HaiyanPG 7 ShelterBox Response Team trainingPG 9 Syria ConflictPG 10 Sharon BridgmanPG 11 ShelterBox’s Action HeroesPG 13 Regular GiftsPG 14 Online Shop

KEEP IN TOUCH:T: 01326 569782 E: [email protected]: Water-ma-Trout, Helston, Cornwall, TR13 0LWCompiled by: Mark Nicholson ([email protected]) Front cover image: ShelterBox Operations Manager Alf Evans helps a family in North KoreaCharity No: 1096479 Company No: 4612652 President: HRH The Duchess of CornwallShelterBox is a Charity independent of Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation.

Children smiling in the Philippines after thier family recieved a ShelterBox diaster relief tent.

BOLIVIA FLOODS60,000 homes damaged, 84,000 cattle lost, and a looming food crisis

In an effective partnership ShelterBox has been working with Oxfam and Rotary in Bolivia to bring emergency shelter and vital supplies to families forced from their homes by widespread flooding. In February heavy rains caused gradual flooding across the centre and northern parts of the land-locked Latin American country of Bolivia. Thousands of families were forced to uproot to escape the floodwaters, leaving their homes and belongings in search of safer shelter.

Rotarian Freddy Mercado contacted ShelterBox’s operations department, describing conditions and suffering that were not in the media spotlight. Freddy says, ‘Close to 60,000 families have had their homes damaged in towns and villages in the northern areas in particular. 84,000 cattle have been lost, destroying livelihoods and possibly creating a food crisis in the making. In Santa Ana, 90% of cattle have been lost.’

Four months on Santa Ana is still flooded. Oxfam already had a presence in the country, so ShelterBox sent aid via them from its own pre-positioned stock in Panama. Four camps have been set up in partnership with Oxfam, and another in cooperation with World Vision.

ShelterBox Operations Coordinator Jon Berg travelled to Bolivia as part of a Response Team to verify distributions and meet some of the families. ‘I met one family of three generations in Trinidad who were living in a ShelterBox disaster relief tent,’ said Jon. ‘The tent was not only protecting them against the elements but also allowed them to stay together as one family.’

Thanks to our supporters, hundreds of families in Bolivia now have the shelter and protection needed to help them re-start their lives. Thank you.

ZIMBABWE FEARS THAT A DAM MAY BURST

The simple joy a ShelterBox can bring to flood-affected families.

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ShelterBox has sent enough tents to shelter 800 families forced from their homes due to flooding in Masvingo Province in the African country of Zimbabwe. They had been living along the river basin near the partially constructed Tokwe Murkosi dam until persistent and unseasonal rains raised fears that the dam was going to overflow.

ShelterBox has worked alongside the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which is leading the humanitarian response.

ShelterBox sent stock prepositioned in Islamabad to the affected area within hours to be distributed to families. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit in the same area a week later.

Typhoon Haiyan on 8 November 2013 was a statistical and logistical nightmare. 14 million people faced its fury, and over 6,000 of them lost their lives. In the aftermath over a million homes lay destroyed or damaged, with 3.4 million people displaced and homeless.

Now, many months have passed, during which more than 100 ShelterBox Response Team volunteers have worked in shifts to deliver aid to over 7,000 families, many of them in remote island communities. Almost 6,800 received tents, but in its most complex response to a natural disaster ever, ShelterBox also provided other non-food items including 10,000 solar lights, 870 water filtration systems, 2,300 mosquito nets, 445 tool kits and 30 SchoolBoxes.

Now the need for emergency shelter has diminished, so ShelterBox is turning its attention to providing other types of aid more suited to the current need, such as kits containing tarpaulins, fixings and tools, helping families to repair their homes in this rainy and humid climate. This ability to be flexible and ‘think outside the box’ to meet different circumstances was a strategy established by ShelterBox in 2011.

PHILIPPINESTYPHOON HAIYAN‘The end of an ‘emergency’ phase and the beginning of ‘recovery’ become blurred. All we have found is families caught somewhere between the two.’

Should ShelterBox, most often associated with emergency disaster relief, have packed up and gone home by now? Chief Executive Alison Wallace says, ‘How could we turn our backs when there is so much still to do to help these families rebuild their lives and their homes? Our generous donors have given ShelterBox the resources and the mandate to continue, so we are responding by adapting the practical help we offer.’

Alison visited the Philippines herself in February to see work in progress, and to meet beneficiaries, officials and partner organisations. She vividly recalls the utter devastation, both in urban and offshore communities.

‘In circumstances like these the end of an ‘emergency’ phase and the beginning of ‘recovery’ become blurred. All we have found is families caught somewhere between the two. And, quite frankly, definitions are less important than the humanitarian imperative to focus on what families actually need.’

Response Team Member Toby Ash is in the Philippines now, heading up ShelterBox’s ongoing response, liaising with local officials and managing partnerships with other aid providers. Toby says, ‘The Philippines is a country where nature’s beauty and brutality sit side by side. The sad reality is that ShelterBox gives a helping hand to the country several times a year after extreme weather events and earthquakes. But we remain deeply committed to protecting the most weak and vulnerable here, through thick and thin.’

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The smiling faces of children and families who have learned to live with some of the world’s most extreme weather.

Everyone knows that Typhoon Haiyan was the fiercest storm the world has ever seen. What we didn’t know was how great a test this would be of our ability to help communities from shattered cities to remote islands.

A remote windswept location, exposed landscape, and fly-pasts by military helicopters. Predannack Airfield on Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula is as good a stand-in for a barren disaster zone as you will find anywhere in the UK. This wartime airfield, home in the 1940s to 3,600 personnel and squadrons of Spitfires and Wellington bombers, is now used for Naval helicopter training by nearby RNAS Culdrose.

It is here that disaster relief charity ShelterBox has its training centre. This is where aspiring ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) members are put through their paces, with rigorous practical and classroom training, and nights spent under canvas.

‘We deploy only volunteers who have been carefully selected to deliver our emergency aid,’ says ShelterBox Development Manager Nicky Richardson. ‘Working in emergency response can be complex – everything from clearing customs, to identifying those most in need, to media liaison. Everyone here has different skills to bring to the table and they come from all corners of the world. At the moment we have trainees from India, Germany and UK.’ And the SRT members mentoring the candidates have travelled from Canada, USA, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere in the UK to share their stories and experiences. It is quite a global gathering!

SRT candidate Agnes Leder reflected on the course, ‘It’s been amazing so far. It’s helped me understand how it is to be on deployment responding to disaster and humanitarian crisis. The course has stretched me physically and mentally.’ Nicola Hinds from Northern Ireland added, ‘We need to be prepared for the sights and sounds we’re going to experience in a disaster zone.’

Find out more about volunteering for ShelterBox at www.shelterbox.org

NIGHT TRAIN UNDER CANVAS WITH OUR TRAINEE RESPONSE TEAMS

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Nights under starry skies, days on the march. ShelterBox training is not for the faint-hearted. Photos courtesy of Emily Whitfield-Wicks.

SYRIA: CONFLICT

With a long term presence in four countries, now the charity is focusing on two fronts – in neighbouring Lebanon where an estimated one in every four people is a refugee, and via a route into Syria itself.

SRT Anne Seuren has seen evidence of displaced families huddling for shelter even in ancient monuments. Anne says, ‘It is clear that the majority of people do not have adequate shelter. People are making do with whatever structures are available to them. Life is even returning to an old Roman settlement that was on the tourist map just a few years ago. If I hadn’t seen the images myself, I would never have believed that this former tourist destination is the only shelter these people can find against the elements.’

ShelterBox is not just sending aid over the border in the hope it will get to those in need. A robust plan is in place to ensure that it does. Having already identified the camps most in need of extra shelter, we are sent details of the families who will be receiving our assistance. Videos and photographs are taken so we know who received what, where and when. Where ShelterBox tents are grouped together in large numbers we can even use satellite imagery to check their location and on-going use.

It is over three years since civil war in Syria sparked the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Teams from ShelterBox have worked tirelessly to get aid to the 2.5 million refugees and 6.5 million internally displaced families.

SHARON BRIDGMAN

With help from ShelterBox’s SchoolBox contents, refugee children enjoy the relative normality of a school day.

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Although, as a disaster relief charity, our role is responding to emergency and tragedy, we never expect to be writing about the sudden loss of one of our supporters.

At the end of April 2014 everyone at ShelterBox was deeply shocked and saddened to hear of Sharon Bridgman’s death. She and her husband Tim were in the second year of a great personal adventure, cycling from ‘North2North’ across four continents and 32 countries.

They had already journeyed from Norway, south across Europe and Africa. Then, they continued from the tip of South America, heading towards Central and North America. Their final destination would have been Alaska. In anyone’s book, this was already a remarkable feat of endurance and sheer determination.

But the Bridgmans’ great exploit ended in tragedy. Sharon died in Bolivia after her bike was in a collision with a vehicle while crossing the world’s largest salt flats - the Uyuni - close to the Bolivian / Chilean border. Sharon and Tim had been cycling almost non-stop since June 2012.

We are very proud and grateful that the Bridgmans chose ShelterBox to benefit from their generosity of spirit.

SHELTERBOX’S ACTION HEROESWherever you are this summer, there is likely to be a ShelterBox event nearby raising funds for our disaster relief work. And we are fortunate to have some of the country’s top sporting and action heroes on our side. For event details and updates on our famous supporters go to www.shelterbox.org.

SAM GOODCHILDSam is a young British sailor from Falmouth in Cornwall and an emerging star in the world of short-handed offshore racing. He is working towards the 2016 Vendee Globe, the race that made Dame Ellen MacArthur a household name, and in 2013 achieved the best British result for 38 years in the Solitaire du Figaro. Follow Sam and his yacht ‘Team Plymouth’ with its distinctive ShelterBox spinnaker on www.samgoodchild.com as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

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JAMES CRACKNELL O.B.E. AND BEN FOGLEIn February Olympic Gold rower and endurance athlete James Cracknell OBE visited ShelterBox’s Helston headquarters to show his support for the charity and learn more about disaster relief. James toured the assembly line where ShelterBoxes and SchoolBoxes are packed before shipping. He is one of Britain’s most successful athletes of all time, with two Olympic Gold Medals and six World Championship titles.

James Cracknell is a friend and TV presenting colleague of another famous ShelterBox supporter, Ben Fogle (seen below right with ShelterBox CEO Alison Wallace). James and Ben first teamed up in 2005 to race in a 7m boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean, arriving in first place in Antigua after 49 days at sea. This was broadcast as the BBC series ‘Through Hell and High Water’.

HARLEQUINSLast August as part of their pre-season preparations, the Harlequins rugby squad teamed up with ShelterBox for team-building training. Twickenham-based ‘Quins’ have been engaged with ShelterBox for some time, but this was the first course to be arranged with the charity’s training unit. A special match day collection for ShelterBox followed at Twickenham stadium in May this year.

SIR BEN AINSLIEOlympic yachtsman and America’s Cup victor Sir Ben Ainslie was brought up in Cornwall. A Truro School pupil, he learned to sail near Falmouth, and his parents still live near ShelterBox’s headquarters on the Lizard. Quadruple Olympic gold medallist, knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honours, and most recently victorious Americas Cup strategist, Sir Ben has long been a supporter of ShelterBox. Here he is helping to pack aid for Syria at ShelterBox HQ.

We don’t know where or when the next disaster will strike, but we do know that lives could depend on us when it does. For the families who have lost their homes, possessions and livelihoods, every day can be a battle for survival.

Every donation makes a difference, but regular gifts ensure that we are always ready to respond, meaning families receive essential aid as quickly as possible.

By making a regular gift, you can help us keep enough lifesaving aid in stock to respond rapidly when crises strike. Your gift could provide training for more volunteers to deliver aid to disaster zones. And with your support even more aid could be stored in countries prone to disasters, like the Philippines, so we can reach families as quickly as possible.

The benefits of regular giving

Giving regularly by Direct Debit is one of the most cost-effective ways of giving as it keeps administrative costs to a minimum, meaning even more of your gift goes directly to families in need.

Giving by Direct Debit is also quick and easy to set up and you can amend the amount you give to suit you or cancel your gift whenever you wish.

How to start making a regular gift

We can only reach vulnerable families quickly by being prepared for disaster. If you would like to make a regular gift to help families start rebuilding their lives, simply complete and return the Regular Giving form on the back of this newsletter. Or you can call us on 0300 0300 500 or go to www.shelterbox.org/donate

REGULAR GIFTSTHEY HELP US PREPARE FOR DISASTER

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SHELTERBOX ONLINE SHOPHere are some great new products ideal for the summer. They are perfect as gifts, or why not treat yourself? Purchasing from www.shelterboxshop.org helps to support ShelterBox’s ongoing work.

ShelterBox Water Bottle 500ml £5.50

Cornish Natural Handmade Soap £4.00

The Day The Bombs Fell – YSB Children’s Book £4.00

GIFT AID

If you are a UK tax payer you can make your donations go even further. For every £1 you give to ShelterBox, we can reclaim 25p from HMRC at no extra cost to you. Simply fill in the ‘Your Details section and sign and date below to complete your declaration.

Please treat this donation and all donations I have made in the past four years as Gift Aid donations. Please also treat all future donations as Gift Aid donations until I tell ShelterBox otherwise. I confirm I have paid or will pay an amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax for each tax year (6 April to 5 April) that is at least equal to the amount of tax that all the charities or Community Amateur Sports Clubs that I donate to will reclaim on my gifts for that tax year (currently 25p for every £1 given). I understand that other taxes such as VAT and Council Tax do not qualify.

Signtaure: Date:

To find out more about other ways of supporting ShelterBox, including fundraising, volunteering or leaving a gift in your Will, please call us on 0300 0300 500 or go online www.shelterbox.org

YOUR DETAILS

Title: First name: Surname:

Home address:

Postcode:

KEEPING IN TOUCH

We would like to communicate with you in a cost-effective way by sending you email updates about our disaster relief work around the world.

Email: Telephone: By providing your email or phone number you consent to receive updates from us. If at any time you prefer not to receive these, please contact us at [email protected] or on 01326 569782. You can also unsubscribe from emails at any time by selecting ‘unsubscribe’ at the bottom of our emails.

If you would like to make a donation to help families survive the aftermathof disaster, simply:

• Complete the form using a ball-point pen and return to ShelterBox, Water-ma-Trout, Helston, Cornwall, TR13 0LW

• Call us on 0300 0300 500• Or go online www.shelterbox.org/donate

SHELTERBOX DONATION FORM

REGULAR GIFT

We can’t predict the future, but with your help we can be ready for it. Your regular gift will help ensure we are always ready to help families in need, whenever and wherever disaster strikes.YES, I want to make a regular gift to ShelterBox of £ monthly/quarterly/half yearly/annually* starting on the 1st/15th* of / *Please delete as applicable

SINGLE DONATION

I would like to make a donation of: £(Please make cheques payable to ‘ShelterBox’)

Please debit my credit/debit card: (Tick as appropriate) q Maestro q Mastercard q VISA q Amex

Card No:

Start date: Expiry date: Issue No (Maestro only):

Card holder name: Signature: Date:

M MM MY YY Y

LEAVING A GIFT IN YOUR WILL

Gifts in Wills are a lasting way to support our work and can ensure we are ready to help families who need us, whenever and wherever disaster strikes.q I have already included ShelterBox in my Willq I intend to include ShelterBox in my Willq I would like to receive more information about leaving a gift to ShelterBox in my Will

INSTRUCTION TO YOUR BANK OR BUILDING SOCIETY TO PAY BY DIRECT DEBIT

Name(s) of account holder(s)Service user number

Reference

Instruction to your bank or building societyPlease pay ShelterBox Trust UK & Ireland Direct Debits from the account detailed in this Instruction subject to the safeguards assured by the Direct Debit Guarantee. I understand that this Instruction may remain with ShelterBox Trust UK & Ireland and, if so, details will be passed electronically to my bank/building society.

Bank/building society account number

Branch sort code

Name and full postal address of your bank or building society

To: The Manager Signature(s)

Date

Address

Postcode

Bank/building society

2 7 7 9 5 0

Banks and building societies may not accept Direct Debit Instructions for some types of account

ShelterBox is a registered charity. Charity No: 1096479 Company No: 4612652President: HRH The Duchess of CornwallShelterBox is a charity independent of Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation

Thank you for helping vulnerable families take the first steps to rebuilding their lives in the aftermath of disaster.Code DCNLMSUB 2/14

ShelterBox is still hard at work in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan. Read more on pages 5 & 6.