Every Shelter

Why Donate to Every Shelter?

Globally there are over 82.4 million refugees in the world who will be displaced for an average of 27 years. Allow yourself a moment to imagine this – living yourself or raising a family while effectively camping, for decades.

This problem is profound and growing. In the last decade we’ve seen the rate of growth grow dramatically and the World Bank predicts that this number will grow to over 240M over the next three decades as climate change drives increasingly more families from their homes. We need modern solutions. Why? Because right now, this is what refugees receive for their decades long camping experience a structure, a tarp, and a dirt floor.

So we started with a floor. Emergency Floor lifts families off of the cold, fecal infested ground.
It is light, modular, and installs in minutes. These boys are carrying half a shelters worth and would go on to install these floors in their home for their families. We’ve reached over 10,000 refugees and counting.
Now we’ve turned our focus on the roof and walls – the tarp! Two years ago we found families in Lebanon using old billboards to cover their home instead of the traditional tarp. The standard issue tarp last about 3-6 months while this material had already lasted over two years.

Globally there are multiple billions of square feet of this material that will be produced and wind up in the landfall. Why? Because these organizations are contractually obligated to protect the branding of their clientele. All the while we have a global need for great tarps to house the most vulnerable among us.
We solve the marketing / IP issues surrounding the reuse of this material by simply sewing the advertisement up on itself, refreshing this wastestream into a super strong shelter tarp. Sewing, as you may imagine, happens in every country in the world.

But as important as what we make is how we make it. 86% of refugees live in developing countries. In the context where we work, 1.4 million refugees live in Uganda – a country with over 70% unemployment.
And yet this is the current model for aid goods for refugees – we make the goods in established economies then send them on boats to regional warehouses more trucks, more boats to local warehouses where then the final truck will drive tarps based literally thousands of people who could have made those tarps.

A humanitarian response designed for the short-term too often ends up administering long-term misery.
What happens when we take the stuff that refugees need to survive and we employ the unemployed local community to make that stuff? What ripple effects will we see when we recognize the human capacity and local entrepreneurial spirit of both refugees and the local host community.
There is a stream! A current moving of human potential and energy that can be utilized and the current aid model isn’t getting wet enough! It’s time to jump in!

We collapse the supply chain. We close the product feedback loop. We recenter value.
It’s simple, but it’s revolutionary.