Airfreight industry rallies round to help Yemen kids

Customers of Coyne Airways and Air Charter Service are helping life-saving support from War Child UK get through to the children of Yemen.
Money raised goes towards the charity’s vital work, for example providing some of the most vulnerable households with food vouchers.
"The funds contributed by Coyne Airways and ACS are based on Coyne’s idea of a Structured Donation Plan (SDP), which gets companies to make a small donation based on a fixed amount per transaction every time one of their customers makes a purchase from them,” explained Coyne chief executive, Larry Coyne.
“The SDP is designed to get the freight industry to donate painlessly to good causes particularly those around families and children caught up in war zones.”
Coyne and ACS are hoping to persuade more companies to use the SDP to contribute to good causes like War Child in 2017.”
War Child has been working in Hajjah, in the north-west of Yemen, and Sanaa, the largest city in Yemen, to reach approximately 6,000 people since it was granted a licence last December. Its chief executive, Rob Williams, said: “We are incredibly grateful to Coyne and ACS. Support like theirs has meant that as soon as we were granted our licence, we could invest in setting up our operations in Yemen to respond to the unfolding humanitarian disaster.” said 
Family-run Coyne Airways and ACS launched the initiative to back War Child last autumn, donating one US dollar to the charity from every booking.
Customers have the opportunity to match the donation on a quarterly basis and, so far, thousands of dollars have been raised through the programme.
“Children are already benefitting from this initiative and we would urge other companies in the air cargo community to join us in supporting War Child in this very simple way,” said Coyne.
Chris Leach, Chairman of Air Charter Service, commented: “Larry and I have both been in this industry for over 40 years and we set up this initiative after witnessing, first-hand, some harrowing scenes in those times.
"We feel that this is, in a small way, is giving something back. As Larry says, if everyone were to join us in donating just one dollar per booking, think of how much money the air cargo community could raise for this worthy cause.”