SWISS House opens in Dar es Salaam

A new SWISS House has opened in the SOS Children’s Village in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The house’s construction was funded by the generous donations of SWISS passengers during 2005. SWISS has been supporting the SOS Children’s Villages international charity for disadvantaged children for some time now through its “Your small change can make a big change” campaign to collect loose foreign currency aboard its flights.

Tomorrow, November 1, sees the opening of a new SWISS House in the SOS Children’s Village in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The construction of the new accommodation has been financed through the generosity of SWISS’s customers, who donated some CHF 208 800 to the SOS Children’s Villages international charity via the airline’s inflight collecting campaign in the course of 2005. SWISS’s own employees also help, funding the children’s living expenses through their donations to the SWISS Staff Foundation for Children in Need.

The SWISS House will offer ten orphaned children a new home. The Dar es Salaam SOS Children’s Village extends to 13 houses plus various further facilities. When full, the Village will provide 120 young orphans with a safe and caring environment. Over half of these places have already been filled.

A further SWISS House is being financed in the SOS Children’s Village in Phuket, Thailand, through the CHF 171 070 donated by SWISS passengers in 2006 together with proceeds from this year’s collecting activities. This house will accommodate ten more needy children; and work on the construction of the SOS Children’s Village in Phuket is already under way.

SWISS has been collecting on behalf of the SOS Children’s Villages international charity since September 2002. It does so by distributing envelopes to passengers on its flights and inviting them to use these to donate any spare foreign currency or other change they may have.

All in all, the “Your small change can make a big change” campaign has raised just under CHF 900 000 to date in over 150 different currencies. SWISS is delighted that its customers are so actively and generously involved in these humanitarian endeavours, which offer help, hope and new prospects and perspectives to underprivileged children all over the world.