Rotary Club of Marblehead Harbor

Marblehead’s two Rotary Clubs have quickly ramped up fundraising efforts to send ShelterBoxes to help Haiti begin to recover from the devastation of a Jan. 12 earthquake and a second 6.0-plus quake that struck early Wednesday morning.

Each ShelterBox contains a 10-person tent, sleeping bags and mats for 10, a multi-fuel cook stove, pots, pans, cups, utensils, a tool kit, shovel and rope, mosquito netting, rain gear, a children’s activity kit, water-purification kit and more. The $1,000 cost to sponsor a box also covers the costs of delivery and having a “Response Team” on the ground to monitor the distribution and set up of the boxes.

“Shelter Box delivers exactly the kind of aid that is desperately needed now in Haiti,” noted Ed Bell, the Rotary Club of Marblehead Harbor’s Shelter Box chairman.

At the club’s Tuesday morning meeting, it was announced that the club, with the help of some of its friends, had raised enough to contribute seven Shelter Boxes to the relief efforts.

The previous Thursday, the Rotary Club of Marblehead had voted to send four Shelter Boxes to Haiti, two funded out of the club’s treasury and two funded by “passing the hat” at the club’s lunch meetings. The club raised more than enough to purchase one box at its Jan. 14 meeting.

ShelterBox began as a grassroots effort in Great Britain, part of a Rotary International worldwide effort to honor the turn of the millennium with service projects. It soon went international, with founder Tom Henderson reaching out to the Rotary Club of Lakewood Ranch near Sarasota, Fla. to become the primary Rotary administrator for the ShelterBox program in the United States.

The ShelterBox USA Web site notes that the organization has established an operations base in Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital, and is being assisted by a French aid agency to determine the areas in most dire need of the boxes. “Logistical hubs” in Miami and the Dominican Republic are serving as way stations for Haiti-bound supplies.

The Marblehead clubs’ efforts comprise part of the more than 3,300 ShelterBoxes that have been committed so far, enough to help up to 33,000 people. Beverly Rotary, too, has sponsored four boxes. But more help is desperately needed.

ShelterBox Head of Operations John Leach noted, “This is the largest, quickest and most complex deployment in our history. We are now very well organized across four countries [including the U.K.] to get ShelterBoxes to the people of Haiti quickly. We are now set up to channel aid to those in need efficiently and effectively in the days and weeks to come. This is a long-term commitment from ShelterBox and we have to sustain our initial push.”

Bell noted that what makes the program so easy to support is that “100 percent of the donation actually ends up on the ground with a tangible and direct impact.”

Rotary Club of Marblehead President Jeffrey Wargo agreed.

“This aid goes directly through Rotary connections in Haiti,” Wargo wrote in an appeal to members. “Consequently, these boxes do not end up in government warehouses or on the black market and is our guarantee that our sponsored boxes will actually help families in need.”

By sheer coincidence, Bell had set up speaking engagements scheduled for this week before Rotary Clubs in Danvers and Lynn long before the Haiti earthquake hit. Those talks will now take on a new urgency, he noted.

A retired media executive, Bell also recently produced a half-hour program on ShelterBoxes to air on Marblehead’s local-access station, MHTV. Upcoming air times are Tuesday, Jan. 27, 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday, Jan. 28, 1 p.m. on Comcast Channel 10 or Verizon Channel 28.

Both Bell and Wargo noted their clubs would be happy to serve as a conduit for donations to ShelterBox. Donations may be mailed to the Rotary Club of Marblehead Harbor, P.O. Box 941, Marblehead, MA 01945. Donations may also be sent directly to ShelterBox USA, 8374 Market St. #203, Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 or made online at shelterboxusa.org.