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Qatar Airways Cargo Guillaume Halleux, Chief Officer Cargo, Qatar Airways, brings us to speed on the carrier’s charitable initiatives.
Qatar Airways Cargo recently launched the latest ‘Chapter Three’
in its WeQare charitable initiativeCHAPTER 3 LET’S STAND TOGETHER
Global Supply Chain conducted an exclusive interview with Guillaume Halleux, Chief Officer Cargo at Qatar Airways to get the low-down of this charitable proposition and assess its progress.
Global Supply Chain (GSC): Qatar Cargo recently announced ‘Chapter 3 of WeQare Programme– Let’s Stand Together’. Tell us more about this initiative?
Guillaume Halleux (GH): The third chapter is part of our long-term sustainability programme, WeQare. Children are the future generation and every child has the right to dream. To make their dreams come true, we based our Chapter 3 “Let’s Stand Together” solely around children. We garnered the support of people worldwide in the charity drive to gather donations of toys, educational materials, and sports items.
The idea behind Chapter 3 ‘Let’s Stand Together’ came to me when I was on a trip to Africa with my family and visited an orphanage. We were humbled by the visit and considering the role of Qatar Airways Cargo in air freight, we decided to launch the donation drive and involve our employees across the group and our customers worldwide to contribute and be part of this vision.
GSC: Give us more details about the mechanics and operations of this Chapter 3?
GH: We rolled out the charity drive worldwide, opening it up for business partners, friends, families, and anyone willing to participate in this noble campaign. Each of our stations set up its own collection point where people could drop off their donations.
We also opened six collection points for our employees as well as a public collection point in Doha. To foster team building, during our internal annual cargo conference, all donations were sorted in Doha with participation from over 200 colleagues from Qatar Airways Cargo and our handling partner Qatar Aviation Services Cargo.
GSC: What propelled Qatar Airways Cargo to make this move?
GH: We are concerned about the legacy we leave for the future generation. As the world’s leading cargo carrier, we strongly believe in giving back to the community and protecting our environment. Our intention is to build and contribute to a sustainable future through a sustainable business.
The leadership team of Qatar Airways Cargo came together to brainstorm on how we could make sustainability applicable to our everyday life, through a series of concrete actions designed for the industry. Hence, partly triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and given that sustainability is top on our agenda, WeQare was launched in the summer of 2020.
GSC: Tell us more about Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 and how successful were these?
And o er a friend and confidant GH: WeQare was launched with Chapter 1 – One Million Kilos, providing Every child needs a familiar source of comfort; someone they can confide in when the world outside seems daunting. free transport of 1 million kilos of Because WeQare, we want to give children a constant companion they can call their own. Moved by people humanitarian aid and medical equipment qrcargo.com to charitable organisations. Many of our freight forwarders have been allocated space to give to charities of their choice. It was launched at the right time when people worldwide were affected due to the pandemic. A number of freight forwarders and ground handlers even offered their door-to-door services free of charge, be it customs processing or pick-up and delivery. Chapter 2 – Rewild the Planet was launched in February 2021, through which we offer free transportation for wild animals back to their natural habitats. This capacity is being made available for wildlife NGOs, and we
Guillaume Halleux, Chief Cargo Officer, Qatar Airways Cargo.
know because of talking to them, that the biggest problem they face is cost of transportation.
It was from these discussions that the idea emerged. The carrier transported seven abused and rescued cubs and lions from Ukraine via Doha to Johannesburg, under this programme for Warriors of Wildlife. There are upcoming live animal shipments under this chapter that will offer free transport to rescued wild animals.
GSC: What was the duration of this 3rd donation drive and how successful was it?
GH: We launched the donation drive ‘Let’s Stand Together’ on 26 April until 10 May. Due to high demand, we even extended it in the State of Qatar until 15 May. I am overwhelmed by the amount of support we received from our staff and partners worldwide.
The success of the project was beyond our expectations. Donations were received from over 50 cities around the world and close to 250 staff of the airline helped in sorting the items before packing them and then assisted with the distribution. Nearly 100 cubic meters (300 boxes and crates) of donations were received and distributed to charities worldwide.
When you do something good, you generate such a buy-in that everybody wants to do something to help, and everybody loves it.
Given our commitment to sustainability and protecting the environment, we will also offset the carbon dioxide emissions of the donated items transported.
GSC: How do these chapters fit in with the broader Qatar Cargo CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives?
GH: Sustainability is high on our agenda and investing in this area brings multiple benefits to everyone including our planet. We have already started several initiatives at the hub such as recycling waste, reusing spreaders and wooden planks, operating electric forklifts and tractors that contribute to reduction of emissions and electronic transmission of data. We have also successfully implemented a paper waste recycling programme.
WeQare is built on the four fundamental pillars of sustainability: economy, environment, society, and culture and fits in well with the broader CSR initiatives listed above. The programme and its chapters are close to our heart and the support that we have received thus far for the first three chapters only proves that such positive actions also inspire others to contribute to sustainability.
We are not only committed to our customers but also to the world community. In this sense, WeQare is part of the group’s CSR, of which sustainability is a pillar.
GSC: Is this an ongoing process and what new initiatives do you plan to launch in the future?
GH: WeQare is a long-term programme with several chapters due to be announced. Each chapter allows participation not only from the airline but also offers a platform for its customers to give back to communities. Next in line is Chapter 4, details of which will be revealed once we are closer to finalising this chapter, so stay tuned.
