About Us

Having somewhere dry and warm to sleep, to prepare meals and be with your family is vital for starting the long process of rebuilding your life.

ShelterBox teams work with disaster-hit families around the world, offering emergency shelter and other essential items to support them in rebuilding their lives.

Every disaster is different and so is every community, so we spend time with those affected to make sure we can offer the right support at the right time to help them recover. See how we work.

Our teams can travel by boat, helicopter or tuk-tuk to get to the families who need your support – whatever it takes to get to the people who have lost their homes to disaster. See where we are currently working.

Our purpose is to provide emergency shelter to families who have lost their home to disaster, enabling them to rebuild their lives.

We go to hard to reach communities, often those overlooked by others, to provide vulnerable families with a place to call home.

We work with our global network to support communities around the world to rebuild and recover from the worst days of their lives.

We were founded by the Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard in 2000. Over the past 20 years we have supported over 1.5 million people to help with recovery after disaster.

We can’t do it alone

We are one big international team united in the belief that no family should go without shelter after disaster. We build lasting relationships and are good to each other.​

We make a tangible impact

Our purpose is simple and we want to keep it that way. We work in a complex world but we keep focused on making a real difference to peoples lives.​

We do the right thing

We strive to do the right thing. People are at the heart of everything we do. We have a responsibility to make the best decisions for the communities we support and listen to and learn from each other.​

We plan for tomorrow

We are forward-thinking. We continually seek new ways to tackle the challenges we face, proactively researching new ideas and adapting to changing circumstances. ​

Because … disasters don’t wait

Disasters don’t wait. So we step up, set priorities and trust our people to get things done. We expect the unexpected and adapt quickly.​ We plan for tomorrow, do the right thing and work together to make a tangible impact.

At ShelterBox, we strive to do the right thing. It is an important value at the heart of our organisation and it drives our commitment to improving equality, diversity and inclusion in our work and workplace.

We are fully committed to tackling racism, injustice and discrimination in our work and our organisation.

We recognise the inequalities suffered in the communities we live in and work with. We are not all equal, particularly in the face of disasters, and we work to understand the vulnerabilities faced by certain groups so that we can best support the people who need it most.

Equality is our goal. In order to reach it we need to stand in solidarity with groups facing oppression anywhere in the world, educate ourselves and strive to learn more.

We recognise that we are at the start of this journey and there is much we need to do to dismantle systemic biases, racism and discrimination. We are committed and taking action across our global network and to best serve the communities we support.

Learn more