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[ awards 2000 ] The Rio Tinto
Award for Long-term Commitment
Short-listed: British Airways
Pat Kerr, a British Airways stewardess, decided to help local children
during her stopovers in Bangladesh rather than swim in the hotel
pool. In 1987 the home where they lived faced closure. With assistance
from British Airways and colleagues, she raised the money to build
the still flourishing Sreepur village for 600 children, 40 miles
from Dhaka.
Other staff have followed her lead. A stewardess, Theresa Strain
set up Children of Mukuru to feed, clothe and educate 6,000 streetchildren
in Nairobi, where other BA staff are involved in a home for 70 children
infected with HIV. Britt Angel set up British Airways Runners, which
collects clothes, toys and other gifts and takes them to street
children. David Mustill, a flight despatcher at Heathrow, launched
a scheme, now nearly complete, to build a new school for Nyanyano
near Accra. Children are one focus of the varied schemes through
which BA and its staff help developing countries. BA’s Sustainable
Business Unit promotes these schemes.
Under the heading Change for Good, BA cabin staff collect foreign
coins and currency which passengers can no longer use. They have
raised over £10million in all and as much as £250,000
in a single month. The money goes to the UN Children’s Fund which
is using it to help and train street children in Rio de Janeiro
and Mexico City, support an after-school programme for primary pupils
near Johannesburg and provide water and schools for families in
the slums of Lagos. There are other projects in India, Tanzania
and elsewhere.
Another British Airways focus is on conservation. British Airways
Assisting Conservation, whose assistance includes free air tickets
to help people from developing countries learn more about conservation
issues, began back in 1983. It similarly helps the collection of
seeds for the Millennium Seed Bank set up by Kew. It meets what
for conservationists is a major cost, that of getting to and from
places such as Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Antigua, Sri Lanka and Vietnam
where rhinos, gorillas, painted dogs, racer snakes, turtles and
seahorses need to be saved.
Rosemary Kinyanjui, who travels from the United States to Kenya
to work part-time for Friends of Conservation, has just been setting
up a rhino survey and arranging for schools to plant trees. A Sri
Lankan voluntary body, the Turtle Conservation Project, sponsors
a community-run protection and education scheme at Rekawa, an impoverished
community which used to collect turtle eggs from the most important
breeding beach on the south coast. Egg collectors turned nest protectors
have enabled over 200,000 hatchlings to make it to the sea. The
project has helped Rekawa by setting up a medical clinic, running
English classes to improve job prospects and seeking tourist income
from watching turtles and from handicrafts.
British Airways runs the Tourism for Tomorrow awards which give
recognition to projects helpful to local people and their environment.
One winner was a village in Jordan that was losing young people
to the cities. It revived its crafts and culture and reinvented
itself as a tourist resort.
British Airways Holidays audits its hotels to see their effect
on their environment. The audit of a hotel on St. Lucia has just
been completed. British Airways is committed by its code of business
conduct and adherence to the Global Sullivan Principles to seek
opportunities to improve the environment and to work with communities
to improve their wellbeing
Visit [ British
Airways ]
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