Cathay Pacific Airways and the Hong Kong Committee for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef HK) recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Change for Good in-flight fundraising program.
Since the program was launched in 1991, more than HK$165 million has been raised to support Unicef’s life-saving programs in over 150 developing countries worldwide. Several new initiatives were also unveiled to help transform the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children.
Following a highly successful collaboration, Cathay Pacific and Unicef HK are giving the inflight fundraising program a facelift and expanding Cathay’s contributions to a series of education projects. Recently, Cathay Pacific revealed a new plan to support Unicef’s Schools for Asia initiative by contributing 30 percent of the program’s annual donation to two of the Schools for Asia countries, China and India, in 2016.
Worldwide, 61 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in schools, around one-third of who are Asian. Unicef launched the Schools for Asia initiative in 2012, aiming to provide a better education for marginalized children in the 11 Asian countries in need of increased funding and support. The program focuses on early childhood development, quality learning, equity, and education in emergencies.
Jane Lau, chief executive of Unicef HK, expressed gratitude for Cathay Pacific’s longstanding and wholehearted commitment to the program: “Millions of deprived children in developing countries have benefited from the donations raised through Change for Good.”
To further enhance awareness, Cathay Pacific and Unicef HK launched 25 new donation envelope designs, with each design depicting a country and a short story about the country.