The Humanitarian Shelter is now officially open! The red ribbon was cut by Deborah Pullen (BRE Trust) and Jamie Richardson (Catholic Relief Services) at the latest addition to the BRE Watford Innovation Park, during the UK Shelter Forum event on Friday (17th November).
Created by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in collaboration with BRE, the shelter is a life size, walk-through exhibition demonstrating an example of emergency shelters used during reconstruction of homes during or after disasters.
Photo credit: Peter White
Inside the shelter are a variety of different exhibitions presented by different humanitarian organisations to demonstrate the work they are conducting abroad and how their organisation is contributing to the shelter sector. Throughout the two years the shelter will be on the Innovation Park, there will be a variety of exhibitions, including virtual reality, to demonstrate current issues faced in the shelter sector and how organisations are tackling these.
“Installing CRS’ demonstration shelter on our Park gives us the opportunity to further collaborate and share our knowledge with the humanitarian sector as well as showcasing the benefits of QSAND, our tool for the sustainable reconstruction of disaster affected areas” says Yetunde Abdul, QSAND Programme Manager at BRE. “We can also bring in our wider research and demonstration activities that take place on the Park, for example we have recently opened a flood resilient demonstration building and have extensive programmes of research covering climate change and resilience buildings”
If you would like to visit the Humanitarian Demonstration Shelter at any point over the next two years please visit the iPark portal to book in.
