Shelter Mission to East Timor

In this article, we explain more about the Shelter program, their workshops, missions and other initiatives. Shelter is one of the employee programs funded by the Lovinklaan Foundation. It’s a partnership program between Arcadis and UN-Habitat aimed at a common goal: to improve the quality of life of citizens in rapidly growing cities around the world. Since 2010, an impressive number of more than 100 technical support missions have been completed in Asia, Africa and Middle and South America.

‘When we went on a Shelter mission to East Timor where we worked with various ministries of the East Timor government to review the comprehensive master plan of their capital city Dili. The city has a lot of potential built on some fundamentals: they are a post conflict city, in rebuild mode, with a very young population and have established international partners such as Portugal and Australia.

During the mission we visited a couple of deprived housing areas (how the UN defines them) and places of interest related to the development of the comprehensive master plan for Dili. Not surprising, everyone was friendly and willing to talk to us. Especially the kids, they were very curious.

For the program we spent one week in Dili, East Timor. The objective of the mission was to review their current master plan and build onto it, ensuring a comprehensive, inclusive, equitable and economically sustainable future for the city and country.

In the end, I had a wonderful experience working with the government and meeting the benefactors of the plan. The key message was: “first think water, then urban.”’

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