Tom Henderson

Tom Henderson, a Rotarian for 20 years and ex-UK Royal Navy Search and Rescue diver, spotted a gap in aid provision for natural disasters in 1999. He developed the idea of the ‘ShelterBox’, with which he aimed to provide shelter and other essential equipment for survival in an easily transportable box. After gaining the support of his local Rotary Club, then Rotary Clubs worldwide, ShelterBox was formally launched in 2000 and the first boxes of aid were distributed in 2001.

Since its launch in 2000, ShelterBox has responded to more than 80 disasters – earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, floods and humanitarian disasters such as conflict and the AIDs crisis in Africa. The charity’s HQ is still in Cornwall, where it all began, but now there are also branches of ShelterBox established in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Switzerland and Denmark.

The charity has raised over £20 million to date, increasing its capacity to respond to disasters year on year. ShelterBox became well-established in the aid world following the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, where aid was provided for 150,000 people. Major deployments since 2004 include Hurricane Katrina, the Pakistan and China earthquakes, and the Myanmar (Burma) cyclone.

Tom Henderson’s achievements earned him the accolade of ‘CNN Hero’, with extensive coverage on the international television channel. His achievements have been applauded in political and royal circles too, recently receiving a letter of congratulations from the Prime Minister of Canada, and securing HRH the Duchess of Cornwall as President of the charity.

Tom’s ethos of doing ‘the most for the most’ underpins all aspects of ShelterBox operations, in partnership with a ‘can do’ approach, which has enabled the charity to achieve so much in just ten years.

Now, more than 50,000 boxes have been deployed, providing upwards of half a million people with emergency aid. So far in 2009, ShelterBox has responded to, among others, the Australian bush fires, the conflicts in Gaza, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the earthquake in Italy, cyclones in Bangladesh and Typhoon Morakot in south-east Asia.   Now Haiti

Tom’s and ShelterBox’s objective is to provide half a million people each year with emergency shelter.

An SRT will be speaking at Make An Impact on Saturday afternoon