Children: A Universal Cause

Air France KLM’s mission is to connect people around the world. Some 72 million people of all ages, languages, and cultures travel each year on board our aircraft. The attentive service provided to each and every one of our passengers has led the Group toward a better understanding of its customers and their expectations over the years. This approach, which encompasses much more than simple flight services, extends to the destinations and regions where the Group is present and to the people who live there.

Through its international presence, the Group contributes to the economic and social development of the countries it serves by using local resources, promoting skills development, and rallying local players and staff around projects for the local populations.

Air France and KLM each offer their own social and environmental programs, but there is one cause that they are both principally committed to: helping children and young people.

Through the work of the Air France Corporate Foundation and KLM AirCares program – combined with local actions and the support of (or at the initiative of) company staff – this commitment takes the form of concrete actions and long-term investments. 

In 2012, the Air France Foundation celebrated 20 years of supporting children in need. With the support of NGOs, the Foundation contributes to projects in favor of sick, disabled, and underprivileged children by facilitating access to education, training, and cultural activities.

The Foundation has made helping street children one of its priorities, providing funding for the highest number of projects worldwide. In the face of extreme poverty, the associations work relentlessly to bring these children back into mainstream society and give them opportunities to pursue their educations. When, in 2010, Haiti was devastated by an earthquake that left the country completely desolate, the Foundation immediately rallied to provide support and assistance. Two days after the earthquake, the Foundation launched a fundraising campaign with Air France and KLM staff, with a view to rebuilding a school that was ready to welcome 2,500 children between the ages of 6 and 16 a few months later.

Beyond the material and financial aspects, the Foundation wishes to develop its actions. For instance, by creating the Corporate Foundation Club, which groups together some 30 major French companies, its aim is to pool different experiences in order to increase the impacts of its actions and conduct more long-term projects. Furthermore, the Foundation is looking into ways for associations to offer psychological support to street children.

Since 1992, there have been 856 programs funded in 80 countries. The Foundation has a network of 2,200 volunteers and has been sponsored by numerous celebrities (Mstislav Rostropovitch, Javiez Perez de Cuellar, Boris Cyrulnik, Miguel Angel Estrella, Olga Havlova, and Daniel Alagille, among others). Each year, charities are honored for their efforts to improve the living conditions of young people and give them a better future.
Air France has also been supporting humanitarian programs through long-time partnerships with different associations:

• Acting for Life, which is committed, among other actions, to protecting children in distress;
• ECPAT International, which informs passengers about the damage caused by child sex tourism;
• Aviation without Borders (created by pilots), which transports medical supplies and also ill children who cannot be treated where they are;
  
• NGOs that offer medical assistance and transport medical supplies and children suffering from rare diseases to specialized medical centers, and help transport doctors and surgeons to poverty-stricken areas.
  

The KLM AirCares program supports a number of NGOs that contribute through their projects to medical, educational, and/or sanitation needs for communities in developing countries, with a focus on children and giving them good foundations for their futures. The program was set up in 1999 and consisted of supporting four

NGOs per year via a new project every quarter. Since then more than 40 charitable organizations have had their projects supported through financial sponsorship and free freight capacity.

In recent years a shift has taken place. KLM has chosen to focus on specific partners to support their social projects over the long term. In this way, organizations benefit from the long-term sponsorship of KLM. Currently, KLM is working with seven NGOs that were selected on the criteria that they contribute to basic education, health, and sanitation needs. They also needed to be active in those destinations that KLM flies to. KLM offers these partners freight support, logistics expertise, exposure, hands-on help, and active promotion.

KLM is currently working with following partners:

• Wings of Support – the KLM and Martinair foundation staff with more than 3,000 volunteers managing more than 300 projects worldwide;
  
• Doctor2Doctor – a cooperation between Amsterdam University Medical Center, KLM Health Services, and Kenya Airways;
• Aviation Without Borders – supporting regional and international medical transports in and from/to Africa;
• Medical Knowledge Institute – handling health and sanitation in the townships in South Africa by deploying health workers;
• Aflatoun – offering educational programs worldwide;
• Get It Done – a social media fundraising network with many appealing projects set up by passionate youngsters;

Close the Gap – a Belgian nonprofit organization working to shorten the distance between developed and developing nations in terms of computer hardware and know-how. They support 76 projects in 16 African countries. The computers are used mainly for education, but information and communication technologies are used for education and awareness programs and for HIV/AIDS prevention. With the opening of an e-waste facility in Nairobi, Close the Gap computers are sustainable and certified to be dismantled for reuse of metals and materials, thereby providing jobs for the local community.

Flying Blue members are invited to donate their frequent flyer miles to NGOs selected by Air France and KLM AirCares. In 2012 there were 64 million miles donated to all social partners combined.