Late Christmas presents for help alliance

StartCargo trainees and LZ-Catering run great fundraising campaigns

Help alliance is really pleased with two late Christmas gifts it has received. The trainees from StartCargo presented the Lufthansa Group’s employees’ charitable organisation with a donation of over 8,000 euro. The dedicated trainees from Lufthansa Cargo designed an advent calendar and sold it in support of help alliance, completely under their own steam and at their own financial risk. To distribute the calendar, the trainees primarily used their networking skills. “We all wrote to around 40 to 50 colleagues, who in turn managed to convince other employees to help”, explains Jan Wegner from myAirCargo. “Each calendar was marked with a number. At the end, there was a prize draw to win one of 40 prizes which were donated by various companies, departments and Lufthansa partners”, adds Doreen Pietzsch, Operations Support Transit & Warehouse Management. The result of this was that the 1,000 copies of the calendar quickly sold out.

The money will benefit the help alliance project Leona in Senegal, which opens up new prospects for girls and women by providing affordable and partially free education and training opportunities. Since the beginning of the project, over 500 young girls and women have completed their education. More than 80 percent of them now have a job. Every year, 110 children visit the kindergarten. From the kindergarten children who are sent to school, 210 have been able to pass through primary school without having to repeat a year. 70 per cent of them are ranked among the ten best pupils in their classes. Over 700 children have taken part in extra tuition in the past ten years.

“A fantastic project”, says Else Sternbauer, Project Management and Controlling C40. “Of course we hope that the next generation of StartCargo will carry on taking part in the project together with trainees from other companies or those participating in other staff development programmes. It would be a shame if all of the work that went into this was just for one campaign”.

The project group will soon visit the project in Senegal and see for themselves the work that is done over there.

Christmas menus for help alliance

For the third time after 2014 and 2015, LZ Catering and Coca-Cola started a donation campaign together. When purchasing a special Christmas meal in the staff canteens, one euro from each meal went directly to the Lufthansa Group’s employees’ charitable organisation.

The cheque for over 10,000 euros was presented by Ulrich Leidorf, Managing Director LZ Catering and Jan Theiß, Head of Operations, together with Christian Herbener from Coca-Cola to Joachim Steinbach, Managing Director of the help alliance.

“We are very pleased with the generous donation which will benefit people in our worldwide projects”, said Steinbach. “For us it was a given that we would support the voluntary work of colleagues who were involved with help alliance projects”, praised Leidorf. For LZ, it is a good feeling to know that the money is going to where it is really needed”, added Theiß.