FedEx donates aid flights to UNICEF relief effort in Somalia
FedEx Express has provided two supply flights shipping aid to famine-stricken Somalia. The company delivered 91 tonnes (200,000 pounds) of food to Nairobi, Kenya, at the weekend in a initiative working with UNICEF.
An aid shipment was flown in from Paris with a Boeing 777F aircraft, and FedEx will also donate a second relief flight that together will provide enough nutrition for 6,000 malnourished children and 4,000 families for two weeks.
FedEx said the 777F aircraft was more effective in disaster relief activities because it can take 14,000 pounds more payload and uses 18% less fuel than the company’s MD-11 aircraft.
Drought, war and escalating food prices are currently affecting more than two million children in the Horn of Africa, according to UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund.
Famine was declared in parts of Somalia back in July.
Tim Hunter, UNICEF’s deputy director of fundraising, said: “We are grateful to FedEx for the company’s generosity. The life-saving food supplies will reach some of the most vulnerable children whose lives UNICEF and partners are working hard to save.”
FedEx Express has donated more than 5m pounds of charitable shipping in the last year.
Gerald P. Leary, president of FedEx Express Europe, Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Africa, said: “The crisis in the Horn of Africa calls for a prompt and unwavering response. I am both humbled and honored that FedEx can lend its robust logistics expertise and global transportation capabilities to help UNICEF to bring much-needed relief to the children of this region.”
