ShelterBox

Posted by Susanne Golding

Our speaker was Ekkehard Musick from Germany. Ekkehard was Ashley Grier's host father when she was on Rotary Youth exchange, and he is here to attend her upcoming wedding. Ekkehard is a retired High School principal, a retired Army officer and has been a Rotarian since 1995. He is a 3-time Paul Harris Fellow, is the co-ordinator for the inbound students for the German Youth Exchange, and a voluntary speaker for ShelterBox.

ShelterBox was founded by an ex-British Navy Search & Rescue diver - Tom Henderson - who is a member of the Rotary club of Helston-Lizard in Cornwall, England. In 1999 Tom was watching coverage of a disaster and was horrified that the food was being thrown to the survivors and wondered why the food couldn't have been handed to them, giving them dignity.

Ekkehard showed us a presentation of the earthquake in Chile from a friend living there. Whilest we have seen many of the pictures, it was still quite traumatic.

ShelterBox's aim is to deliver 50,000 boxes a year. By April 2010 they had already delivered 23,000.

The content of the boxes is adjusted to suit local conditions but basically each box contains:

A tent (accommodates 10 people), a groundsheet that is waterproof on one side and warm on the other, blankets, water tablets to make the water safe, a small stove, cooking pots and utensils, tool and a bag of crayons, colouring books and paper for the children.

For additional information on this program go to www.shelterbox.org.

Halle and Ekkehard exchanged banners, and Ekkehard left a copy of the official ShelterBox DVD for our club.