Transaero’s charity scheme
The air company Transaero’s new social programme will provide assistance to children and adults in the care of charitable organisations.
20.11.2014
MOSCOW. Most often it happens that the major charitable initiatives are directed towards helping sick children. Only a few programmes are geared towards supporting adults suffering from serious medical conditions. The new social programme Privileging Good [“Priviliegiya dobra”] enables customers of the air company Transaero to choose which kind of people to support.
Beneficiaries of the programme can be broadly classified into three groups: children requiring air transport for urgent medical consultations and/or operations; adults suffering from cancer; and people brought up in children’s homes who have been confined to closed spaces and would benefit greatly from travel.
When presenting this social programme, Olga Pleshakova, Director of Transaero, emphasized that the distinctive feature of ‘Privileging Good’ was that the firm’s customers could themselves choose who to help.
Through the scheme ‘Privileging Good’, flights taken with Transaero allow points to be assigned to particular affiliated charities. The accumulated credit enables these partner charities to avail themselves of free air transport for those in their charge. To assign points to one or other charitable foundation, Transaero’s passengers electronically fill in a form stating their own preference.
There are four charitable organisations which belong to this scheme: the centre for creative activities called “Maria’s Children” [Deti Marii]; the ‘Sozidanie’ foundation ; AdVita (“For Life’s Sake”) and the Konstantin Khabenskiy Foundation.
The charitable foundations chosen for the scheme have not been chosen randomly. Transaero has chosen organisations with the broadest possible spread of activities and beneficiaries. In the future, their list of participating charitable foundations will get even broader.
For those people suffering from cancer, the time factor plays an important role.
In her capacity as AdVita’s Director for work with its partners, Svetlana Golovina explained as follows: “During the time of our collaboration with Transaero, 150 of our charges have received free air transport. Given that adults are helped less actively than children, involvement in Transaero’s scheme ‘Privileging Good’, can give those over the age of twenty-one the chance of a normal life.”
Natalia Khasanova, Deputy Director of “Maria’s Children”, believes that Transaero’s new project can help towards solving the important problem of those brought up in children’s homes: “The possibility of taking even just a few of them out beyond the walls of their boarding accommodation will give these young people an enormous amount. It will influence their development and socialisation and open up new horizons for them.”
Transaero has been collaborating with charitable organisations since 1994. Last year the company launched its scheme ‘Journey of Hope’, which is unique in the field of aviation: passengers on its special Boeing 747 could, in flight, make donations to help children suffering from serious heart, brain and spinal conditions by helping those in the care of the charitable foundation “Life Line” [Liniya zhizni].
By Katerina Nenasheva
