Special Deliveries

Photograph by Penny Rambacher

As flight attendants travel the world, they see plenty of impoverished people. Nancy Rivard, an American Airlines flight attendant, decided she wanted to find a way to help those people.

Her brainchild was Airline Ambassadors, which coordinates 4,000 volunteers who help provide more than $2-million worth of donations to orphanages, missions, and other organizations that serve the needy in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and Mexico, among other places. The group also flies children to and from the United States if they need surgery not available in their home countries, and escorts youngsters who live abroad to adoptive parents in the United States.

When Ms. Rivard began her effort in 1996, she had to struggle for every donation. The airlines were not interested in contributing either free travel miles or cash. But she persevered. Fellow flight attendants gave her sample-size bottles of shampoo and lotion to deliver on her first mission to refugees in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the recipients were so grateful they cried.

As the group grew and became better known, some airlines and other companies decided to support it and began donating cash, cargo space, and other products and services to the organization.

The organization delivered $2.8-million worth of aid last year and escorted more than 170 children. All of that was accomplished on a budget of $252,000, which comes from corporate grants and membership fees.

Ms. Rivard says the organization depends heavily on the time that its volunteers put into the organization. Most of the group’s volunteers are airline personnel, though some students, business executives, and others also help obtain and deliver supplies. To participate in Airline Ambassadors, volunteers are required to pay a $35 membership fee, which the group uses to cover its administrative expenses.

Here, Kathy Crider, an American Airlines flight attendant, meets with a woman in Quito, Ecuador, who was one of the beneficiaries of 100 boxes of clothes, shoes, blankets, and vitamins that Airline Ambassadors delivered.