Community - community investment across the UK

Heathrow

Our Community Relations team supports the Heathrow area in a number of ways:

• we work with the boroughs around Heathrow airport, especially focussing on education and youth development
• we recycle our onboard blankets to help community groups and animal welfare centres in the Heathrow area
• we've also given blankets to relief efforts following disasters around the world

The British Airways Community Learning Centre

British Airways charity fundraisers

Our charity fundraising evenings which take place in the Heathrow area have raised £408,073 since 2005 for worthy causes.

Wexham Park Hospital near Heathrow benefited from one of our fundraising evenings. It has used the funds we've provided to create an activity room for teenage cancer patients.

We also support many local fundraisers by giving them flight tickets which can be raffled for good causes.

Gatwick

British Airways has supported a range of community education programmes in and around the Gatwick airport area for a number of years.

Lancing House

One example of a beneficiary is Lancing House, a local care centre in Crawley which offers residential opportunities for children with severe disabilities. British Airways is proud to have provided funding for a sensory room for the children at the centre.

Across the Ages fun day

Each summer British Airways hosts "Across the Ages", a family fun day held at Gatwick. It is an opportunity for people of all ages from the Gatwick and Crawley community to come together.

Manchester

We have supported a number of projects around Manchester and the North West of England, including:

• We supplied tickets to bring Brazilian football legend Pele to the UK to play a reunion game with England goalkeeper Gordon Banks; Gordon Banks saved his shot at goal during a World Cup match. Proceeds from the charity game and evening dinner helped local youngsters in a deprived area of Staffordshire. British Airways 2012 Olympic Ambassador Mickey Ambrose played in the charity game at Stoke City's ground.
• We supported the opening of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool in August 2008 for TransAfrica and the Martin Luther King Centre. Over 200,000 people have now visited the new museum, which is well above target. Both organisations are going to work together next year on educational programmes and are helping to extend a range of contacts for the museum not only in the USA but also in Africa and South America.
• We supplied tickets for fundraising raffles for a number of local charities including Destination Florida which sends children who are suffering from life-threatening illnesses on a holiday of a lifetime.
• We provided a commemorative plaque in the Manchester Airport memorial garden for the passengers and crew who died in the Manchester air disaster in 1985.
• We supported the Meninos do Morumbi Global Grooves event in Manchester with £1,500 contribution for Master classes and £6,870 contribution for Global Grooves Festival 2009.

Newcastle

The Newcastle Community Action Group has been active since the early 1980's and meets on a monthly basis to review requests for assistance and to plan and organise fundraising events to support charities in the Newcastle area, including People's Kitchen, Tiny Lives, Mencap North East, CALM and several hospice and cancer charities.

The monthly events range from book stalls, quizzes, cake baking competitions, and sales of Toblerone calendars. Last year the group raised £4,200 through their fundraising ventures and this was distributed alongside the funding support received from British Airways Community Investment.

Annually, members of the group and volunteers from around the office, organise the Newcastle Business Park Fun Run. In the 16 years of the event, this has raised in excess of £20,000.

The group promotes the use of Fair Trade products by selling them at cost price in the office on a regular basis. This is a significant addition to the Macmillan Big Coffee morning events and proves particularly popular at Easter with the sale of Fair Trade chocolate eggs.

The Newcastle team have strong links with the local universities and have been involved in creating special course modules to help develop student job application and interviewing skills.

A yearly working visit to a local community garden gives the group a chance to support the environment as well as the local community. The garden is maintained by volunteers and is a place where local disadvantaged children can go and spend time learning about sustainable small-scale development.

We donate a small number of flight tickets each year as raffle prizes to charitable events to help maximise the fundraising potential.

Scotland

Please see below for details of some of the many community projects we have recently supported in Scotland.

• We have sponsored a local youth rugby team in Irvine that is running a "Street Rugby" programme for children in the local area. The rugby coaches go out onto the streets and teach the basics of the game to children who are "hanging around" without them having to join a club.
• We supported our engineering base British Airways Maintenance Glasgow with their 200th Airbus Event by involving a local primary school in a "Design a Logo" competition. The winning class of school children were able to come to the Hangar on the day of the event, were given a tour of the facility and the aircrafts, inflated some life vests and met Willie Walsh.
• We are currently sponsoring 16 high school pupils from Govan High School, Glasgow on an engineering programme. These pupils will attend an engineering course for the next year which will involve not only British Airways but also BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Glasgow Science Centre, University of the West of Scotland and Rangers Learning Centre. The teenagers will have the opportunity to learn skills and gain an insight into working life with the aim of helping them become employable on their departure from school.
• Ten of our apprentice engineers recently volunteered at CHAS, the Children's Hospice Association Scotland in Balloch. During the week they were there, they assisted in the preparation of a sensory garden for the young patients of the hospice to enjoy.
• We donate a small number of tickets each year as raffle prizes to Scottish Charities to help them maximise their fundraising potential.