2013 Year in Review And a Look into 2014
A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT Dear Friends, As natural disasters and humanitarian crises continue to displace millions of people around the globe, I remain in awe of you – our generous donors and volunteers who make our work possible. The year 2013 was a busy one as we responded to 25 disasters in 19 countries, including the devastating typhoon in the Philippines and ongoing conflict that is displacing families in and around Syria – two catastrophes to which we continue to respond today.
SHELTERBOX USA BOARD OF DIRECTORS: CHAIR John Keane VICE CHAIR Theresa Mohan TREASURER Wayne Robinson SECRETARY Jim Carriere IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIR Bill Decker BOARD MEMBERS: Mark Midyett Gary Olsen Jack Young
Those whose lives are torn apart by disasters are in desperate need of emergency shelter and supplies. With your help, we were able to deliver shelter, water filters, blankets, tool kits and other essentials, that allowed families to rebuild their lives and communities. Take a look at the following pages to see the impact we’ve made together. I am honored to work with you and proud of what we’ve accomplished. Thank you for your generous support. As we look later into 2014, we will continue to call on you to help us prepare for the next inevitable disasters and crises. Be on the lookout for updates on our needs and initiatives. Together, we will continue to bring families shelter and hope in their hour of greatest need. With gratitude,
Emily S. Sperling
LIFE-SAVING AID ShelterBox provides boxes of aid and other emergency supplies such as durable tents, water filters, cook stoves, blankets, tool kits and other essentials that allow families to survive and rebuild their lives after being displaced from their homes following a disaster or humanitarian crisis. When sending ShelterBoxes, the contents are modified to suit the nature and location of the disaster or humanitarian crisis. Great care is taken to ensure each item is robust enough to be of lasting value.
Learn more at shelterboxusa.org/kit
Learn more about our latest work at shelterboxusa.org/deployments
WAYS TO HELP DONATE shelterboxusa.org/donate Donations of any size can be made online, by calling (941) 907-6036, or by mail to 8374 Market Street #203, Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202.
FUNDRAISE shelterboxusa.org/fundraise From organizing a read-a-thon to taking on mountain bike challenges, our volunteers find ways to turn their passions and hobbies into successful fundraisers that help disaster survivors worldwide.
VOLUNTEER shelterboxusa.org/beinvolved From speakers or student ambassadors to the ShelterBox Response Team, our dedicated volunteers are people of all ages, from all walks of life, who actively engage their communities and organizations to support the ShelterBox mission.
OUR MISSION is to deliver humanitarian relief in the form of equipment and materials that bring shelter, warmth and dignity to people affected by natural and other disasters worldwide.
FROM THE FIELD Yi Shun Lai ShelterBox Response Team Volunteer From the Philippines | Typhoon Haiyan I had a close friend ask me once if I got excited about seeing a new country whenever I get deployed. My answer? “All disasters look the same – they are all equally devastating.” That will always be true, but the ways individual populations respond to disasters set them apart. In the Philippines, our team witnessed some scenarios that will ensure that this deployment will always stand out. Time after time, as we were assessing neighborhoods and populations to determine the level of aid we should call for, we heard people asking us to look at places that might need further help. But these people were not asking about their own homes; they were asking about the homes of their friends, of the neighboring villages. It turns out, the Philippines lives by a national code of ethics called “Bayanihan,” which loosely translates as “community work.” The idea is, the population looks after each other. We noticed this ethic in a micro manner, between neighbors. We noticed it in a broader sense, with an all-volunteer group of lifesavers whose original edict was to prevent drowning deaths, but who found their expertise stretched to the limit when Typhoon Haiyan struck. We saw it working closely with municipal leadership, as we witnessed a mayor and his operations team shuffling their budgets to provide us with traffic cops-turned-community educators. They would later prove to be invaluable as a veritable tent-education army. (Ever seen a group of six volunteers set up a tent in twelve minutes flat, every guy rope staked out and every vent open? I have, and I’ll probably never see it again.)
Yi Shun Lai, right, with a fellow response team member, working in the Philippines We worked pretty closely with other aid agencies on the ground, and since the power was out over most of Bantayan island while we were working there, we relied more than ever on word-of-mouth and eyewitness accounts to do our jobs properly. Time after time, as we accessed neighborhoods that previously hadn’t been accessed, even five weeks after typhoon landfall (a lifetime in disaster recovery terms), we all thanked our lucky stars that our organization is one of the very few that can collaborate with villages and populations on such a granular level. Without ShelterBox’s model of work, hundreds of families might still be living under dangerous conditions. And those same families might not have the attention of larger aid agencies who didn’t know about them before talking to a member of our team. As a response team member, it’s my standard line to say that I’m grateful to be able to deliver our aid by hand, and provide transparency where we might not otherwise have it. This deployment, I’m also grateful to be able to help other agencies to provide for families in need, and grateful to have seen and provided Bayanihan.
.
DEPLOYMENT TIMELINE & HIGHLIGHTS
BABY YOLE, A TRIBUTE TO THE STORM THAT MADE A MIRACLE OUT OF DESTRUCTION Typhoon Haiyan, with winds of 195 mph and its subsequent 13-ft. storm surge, bulldozed almost every building in its path on November 8, 2013. ShelterBox already had response teams in the Philippines—on Bohol Island, helping to shelter communities struck by an earthquake the month prior. Tents and ShelterBoxes were already prepositioned in the Philippines as well as Dubai, Subang near Kuala Lumpur, and Melbourne in Australia. Teams of volunteers stood ready to pack yet more boxes at our international headquarters in Cornwall, England. Our aid distribution experts arrived at Manila and Cebu airports, met with aid partners, and spread out across the islands to scope the worst-affected areas and find viable transportation routes. With more than 100 ShelterBox Response Team members deployed so far, and up to 20 working in the Philippines at any time, this has been ShelterBox’s greatest manpower response in any single deployment.
2013 JAN
Syria North Korea Australia Jordan Mozambique
Syrian crisis* typhoon brush fires Syrian crisis* flooding
Baby Yole with her family, Kinatarcan Island, Philippines, 2014
Due to strategic prepositioning and the generosity of ShelterBox donors, it wasn’t long before we were able to make a firm commitment to help at least 7,800 families who had lost their homes, possessions and livelihoods. While the devastation is still evident in Tacloban, the area hardest hit by Haiyan, families on the small island of Kinatarcan are nestling together in their ShelterBox tents, putting up fences and calling them home. “During the storm, old folks cried, men were scared, mothers tried to protect their children, and babies were born,” said Joewe C. Illustrisimo, a Kinatarcan resident who helped with ShelterBox’s aid distribution on the island. Yole was one of those babies born on the night of the storm. Her mother Hazel named her after Typhoon Yolanda, the local name for Haiyan, as a tribute to the storm that created a miracle out of destruction. (cont. next page)
Philippines: Typhoon Haiyan
FEB
Australia Solomon Islands Myanmar
flooding earthquake/ tsunami conflict
MAR
Madagascar cyclone Uganda flooding Haiti return to community
APR
Turkey/Syria Syrian crisis* Pakistan earthquake *Active deployments taking place as of March 2014
MAY
Uganda flooding USA tornadoes
JUNE
India flooding
The ShelterBox tent is more than just a tent to Hazel and her family; it’s Yole’s first home. Her mother said, “We are so happy with the ShelterBox tent because when we came out of the midwife’s house, we didn’t have a house anymore to go back to. Now this tent is our home.” The interior is immaculate. The family has built a beautiful
wooden bench for the tent, hung curtains to give Hazel some privacy while she was breastfeeding Yole, and set up a neatly organized pantry for their food, as well as a dresser with decorations and family mementos. Many other families on the island followed suit and turned their tents into real homes, knowing that it will take some time to rebuild their houses again.
.
SYRIA: THREE YEARS ON “Our only hope for the future is to be able to return to our home country and live our life as it was before.” “We left our village in Syria one day in the early hours of the morning. We had felt unsafe in our home for a while with all the shelling that was happening in our area. It was a frightening journey here as we had to pass through several checkpoints, but we made it across the border late at night the same day, so it was a very long journey.”
The Syrian conflict, and its resultant refugee crisis, has been described as one of the world’s greatest humanitarian crises. ShelterBox has sought to ease the suffering of refugees and the displaced by providing shelter from sweltering summers and freezing winters. The Syrian catastrophe is now of such epic proportions that the world is running out of superlatives, with the numbers of people fleeing their homes and homeland so vast, they lack meaning. Millions are leading meager existences in refugee camps or makeshift dwellings, neighboring countries are near tipping point in their ability to offer sanctuary, and those still trapped within Syria’s borders are homeless and hidden from the outside world. Thanks to our response teams and partners in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraqi-Kurdistan and Syria itself, we have been able to provide shelter for thousands of desperate families, and convey the message that the outside world has not abandoned them. In 2013, ShelterBox was the first international aid organization to distribute relief tents to Syrian refugees in Lebanon. With so vast a story, the greatest insight often lies in individual tales and quiet voices. Meet 25-year-old Ahed Hussein Zeidan. Her eyes are full of sadness as she tells her story, sitting elegantly in her ShelterBox tent in Akaar, northern Lebanon. shelterboxusa.org/syriacrisis
AUG
Philippines typhoon Iraqi Syrian crisis* Kurdistan Pakistan flooding
SEPT
Sudan Niger Pakistan Philippines
flooding flooding earthquake conflict
Ahed is cradling her four-monthold baby, Omar. On either side of her are two of her three sisters who also live with her, one of whom is holding her own baby boy. Her brother in law is out working to raise enough money to rent the piece of land on which they have settled. “When we arrived here, we were living in an unfinished building, like lots of other families. However, as winter approached, it was freezing as there were no walls. It was not closed or sheltered. We lived here until we received a ShelterBox. We then found this land and set up the tent. We are so grateful for it. “This tent is closed so it is much better, protecting us from all the bad weather, the wind and rain. It’s much warmer and much better than the unfinished house. We are more comfortable and we feel safer and our children are safer.” Despite the hardships that the Syrian refugee population face, thanks to your generous support, more and more families have a shelter that they can call home for as long as it is needed. They will be safe, together and warm.
.
OCT
Philippines earthquake
NOV
Philippines Typhoon Haiyan*
2014 JAN
Indonesia flooding
FEB
Indonesia volcanic eruption Zimbabwe flooding* Bolivia flooding*
ShelterBox USA Financials January 1, 2013– December 31, 2013
INCOME AND EXPENSE TRENDS Income and expense volatility is a fact of life for disaster relief organizations and although ShelterBox USA has made progress toward stabilizing its core income, it contends with significant peaks and troughs in both income and operational activity related to the disaster cycle. Below you will find ShelterBox USA’s income and expenses for the six-year period of 2008-2013.
Youth
Individuals
Civic and Other Groups
The organization continues to have a strong focus on utilizing volunteers to support fundraising, awareness-building and relief work in an effort to limit essential administration and fundraising expenses and maximize funds available for direct relief. To view the organization’s full financial statements please visit shelterboxusa.org.
Foundations
Businesses
Sources of Income $4,342,017 INCOME AND EXPENSE TRENDS ($ MILLIONS)
Fundraising General and Administrative
Program Services
Organizational Expenses $3,284,213
THE SHELTERBOX USA AND SHELTERBOX TRUST CONNECTION ShelterBox USA’s mission is to deliver humanitarian aid in the form of supplies that bring shelter, warmth and dignity to people affected by natural disasters and other humanitarian crises. ShelterBox USA accomplishes this mission through a variety of programs, the largest of which is grant making to ShelterBox Trust, an independently governed charity in the United Kingdom with which ShelterBox USA is affiliated and shares a common mission. ShelterBox USA is scrupulous in maintaining discretion over all funds contributed to it and control over all funds granted out by it.
shelter. warmth. dignity. Every year, millions of families around the world are made homeless because of humanitarian crises and natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and floods. ShelterBox is an international, nonprofit organization that responds immediately, by providing humanitarian relief in the form of supplies that bring hope, independence and a sense of normalcy to the most vulnerable people. Since 2000, the organization has delivered boxes of aid and other supplies such as tents, water filters, stoves, blankets and other tools to help families survive and rebuild their lives in the aftermath of more than 230 disasters in over 90 countries worldwide.
ShelterBox USA 8374 Market Street #203 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 P: (941) 907-6036 | F: (941) 907-6970 | E: info@shelterboxusa.org
www.shelterboxusa.org
ShelterBox USA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the State of Florida Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free 1-800-435-7352. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by the State of Florida. #B-2012. 100% of each contribution is received by ShelterBox USA, Inc. (Registration #85-8013087232C-3).