Shelter, Hope, and a Way Forward

Kerri Murray keeps a photograph that has stayed with her. It’s the face of Esther, a young Nigerian woman whose family was attacked by Boko Haram and who fled to Cameroon, eventually finding refuge at the Minawao Refugee Camp. 

Esther arrived after losing everything. With shelter and support, Esther participated in sewing training, and built a livelihood as a seamstress. Nine years later, she is married with two children and has become one of the camp’s finest dressmakers. 

“Stories like Esther’s are the reason we exist,” says Murray, President of ShelterBox USA. “Shelter is much more than a roof over someone’s head. It provides safety, dignity, and the stability people need to begin rebuilding their lives.”

For Murray, stories like Esther’s are also deeply personal reminders of why she left the corporate world behind.

That world was GlaxoSmithKline, where Murray spent more than a decade building major brands. Then, following a life-threatening complication surrounding the birth of her daughter, Murray began thinking differently about what she wanted to do with her life. 

“I felt incredibly blessed,” she says, “and I had a deep yearning to do something more purpose-filled.” In 2009, she accepted a six-month corporate loan-out to Direct Relief in Santa Barbara. Soon into the assignment, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti.

“I arrived in Port-au-Prince and saw a level of devastation and human suffering that I had not experienced before,” she says. ShelterBox was among the first organizations she encountered on the ground. “They were everywhere.”

The experience changed her life. Murray ultimately left the corporate world, and at the end of 2015, ShelterBox USA called and she became the organization’s president.

Going Further to Reach Families in Need

ShelterBox was established in 2000 in Helston, England, after a local Rotary club embraced an idea to provide emergency shelter and essential supplies to families left homeless after the Gujarat earthquake. 

Today ShelterBox is Rotary’s official project partner in disaster relief, and Murray is herself a Rotarian in Montecito. “Rotarians across the world open their doors and help us,” she says, “with customs, warehousing, trucking, and translators.” That reputation opens doors closed to others. “In the Atlas Mountains of Morocco after the earthquake, I didn’t see other aid organizations, but we had permission to go in and help.”

“We are living through an unprecedented displacement crisis,” Murray says. “More people are displaced today than at any time in recorded history. The U.N. now estimates it’s 120 million.” ShelterBox has sheltered more than three million people in over 100 countries. 

“We have one singular focus. It’s the basic need of shelter,” Murray says. After a disaster, ShelterBox is there to provide tents, tarpaulins, solar lights, cook sets, tools to patch damaged buildings, survival supplies for those inside the shelters, and it offers training to communities on how to build robust shelters. 

ShelterBox accepts no government funding, so every response depends on donors. “Disasters drive donations,” Murray says. “On the worst day ever, people see us on the news. But our work is every day of the year.” 

ShelterBox has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, recognizing the role that shelter, stability, and human dignity can play in building the foundations for peace.