John Kerr from Howe of Fife Rotary Club was speaker at the 9th January club meeting. John gave a very interesting update on the work of Shelterbox Trust, where he has been a volunteer supporter for eight years.

Shelter boxes are the green plastic containers which have tents, bedding, stoves, cooking pots – in fact everything needed to provide emergency shelter to a family made homeless by natural or man made disaster. The vision of the organisation is ‘No family without shelter’. The enormity of the challenge was made clear by John telling us that there are about 59 million people around the world currently in need.

Shelterbox is a registered charity and was started in 2000 in the small town of Helston in Cornwall. That same year the local Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard adopted it as its millennium project. It remains strongly supported by Rotary, which is a partner. The years have seen many developments, including a range of boxes with contents to suit differing needs. These include insulated tents, different sizes of tents and even flexible ‘ShelterKits’, for situations where tents are not suitable.

These kits contain a selection of materials, including tools, ropes, fixings and heavy-duty tarpaulins, that can be used to make emergency shelters, repair damaged buildings and create the foundations for new homes. Contents are customised to suit the location and the needs of each community - sometimes including corrugated iron to help make resilient roofing, or room dividers and mattresses to make warehouses habitable – whatever it takes to help people recover from disaster.

The organisation now also has around 17 ‘affiliates’ (countries) in America, Africa, Asia, Australasia and Europe - all supporting the work. Speedy response to a disaster is vital and logistics include ‘pre-positioned’ boxes for instant delivery (including boxes on board Royal Navy and Dutch Navy ships). Airfreight is slower, although still less that 5 days and back-up by sea freight within 3 weeks.

John’s photographs were a reminder of the many disaster areas to which we have become familiar via our TV screens.

Following questions a vote of thanks was proposed by Andy Matthew. More can be found at www.shelterbox.org.