Cathay Pacific’s January ‘Change for Good’ collection up Four Fold for Tsunami Victims

Cathay Pacific's UNICEF “Change for Good” inflight collections saw nearly a four-fold increase in January as passengers gave generously to help survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The airline collected HK$2,516,552.84 in January compared to HK$660,014.67 collected in the same month last year, UNICEF confirmed. All money collected by the airline in the first three months of the year is going straight to tsunami recovery efforts.

Cathay Pacific has supported the “Change for Good” programme since 1991, and in that time has collected more than US$7 million for UNICEF, the United Nations’ Children’s Fund, simply by asking passengers to donate their unwanted foreign currency change.

A month-long fund-raising effort in January by among Cathay Pacific staff raised HK$7 million for the Hong Kong Red Cross. The company kicked off the fundraising effort for the Cathay Pacific Southeast Asia Disaster Relief Fund with HK$1 million on 29th December, then matched dollar-for-dollar every donation made by staff until the initiative ended on 28 January. 

More than 8,000 Asia Miles members also made donations to Asia Miles charity partners UNICEF, Oxfam Hong Kong, ORBIS and C.A.R.E. Housing Society to help fly relief workers to affected areas. Every donation made between 28 December and 7January was matched mile-for-mile by Asia Miles and more than 275 million miles were raised.

Cathay Pacific also helped to spearhead the Tourism Coalition of Hong Kong’s "We care for South Asia" campaign, which from 14 to 23 January rallied to help rebuild the tourism industry in affected areas with offers to revive interest in travel there.

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