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Variety Club Children’s Hospital

In May 2008, a pioneering new children’s hospital opened in London, thanks to ongoing fundraising by Thomas Cook employees and customers.The £2.3m Thomas Cook Children’s Critical Care Centre at Kings College Hospital is the first of its kind in the UK, housing both Paediatric Intensive Care and Paediatric High Dependency units.

In 2005, Thomas Cook pledged to raise £2m towards the refurbishment of the hospital’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). The £2m target, which has now been achieved, was to cover the estimated cost of building materials. Learning late in 2007 that the actual cost would be £2.3m, we agreed to raise funds for the additional £300,000.

Of the total amount raised for the Critical Care Centre over the last year, £74,297 has come from employee fundraising. The previous year’s totals were as follows:

• £90,652 by asking customers to donate a pound when booking Thomas Cook Holidays in our stores
• £98,271 from in-flight collections backed by a video appeal from Jonathan Ross
• £10,646 from customers donating unwanted foreign coins in our stores
• A further £172,636 from other customer donations
• £150,506 from staff fundraising – ranging from baking cakes and climbing mountains to parachute jumps, customer evenings in resorts, dress down days and marathons

Flights of Dreams

For the fifth year running, Thomas Cook Airlines hosted four Flights Of Dreams for the Variety Club. These took around 800 disabled or disadvantaged children on a flight with Santa. Employees raised money to buy presents for the children and helped on the flights from Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. The four flights cost us £20,000 annually. This year Neilson raised £493 and Manchester Hangar £450 for gifts.

Sail4Cancer

Since 2005 our Neilson business has worked with Sail4Cancer, a charity set up by sailing enthusiasts who have lost friends or relatives to cancer. Using the sport to raise funds for treatment and research, Sail4Cancer also provides patients with opportunities to enjoy the time on the water.

Neilson helps to arrange and fund Beachplus holidays for cancer patients and their families – contributing increasing amounts through deductions from its margin. Its employees have also raised funds at home and abroad through quizzes, dodgeball tournaments, beach volleyball, sweepstakes and an inter-resort Swim the Channel marathon in hotel pools.

This year we funded 50 places for cancer patients and their families to take a break in the sun, bringing the total to 300 since the scheme began. One young patient, Harrison, benefited from a holiday in Lesvos with his family following a brain tumour. Despite balance and co-ordination problems, he was able to enjoy sailing and kayaking.

	Funds contributed by Neilson	Passengers sent by Neilson	Funds raised by employees
2005	£25,453	71	£380
2006	£29,732	87	£3,882
2007	£33,195	101	£10,629
2008	£14,600	50	£7,089

Neilson has been working with Sail4Cancer during 2008 to help raise awareness of skin cancer across the sailing community. This will continue into 2009

Neilson also plans to extend this range of activities to their ski programme with Ski4Cancer, a sister charity.

Travel Foundation

The Travel Foundation is a UK charity which works to protect and enhance the environment and improve the wellbeing of destination communities. We’ve maintained a successful partnership with the foundation since its inception in 2003.

Its work dovetails with our approach to corporate responsibility, because we share the same values and passion for the protection of destination environments and cultures. We support the foundation as an active partner and as a leading fundraiser: in 2008 alone we raised £456,235 towards its projects from customer donations made at the time of booking.

We also offer practical assistance in a number of ways. These include overseas distribution of Travel Foundation materials to suppliers and help with flights, accommodation, staff time and promotional support for roadshows.

For more on what we are doing with the Travel Foundation, see Destination communities.

In-flight collections and scratch cards

Thomas Cook Airlines’ UK staff raise money from in-flight foreign currency collections and scratch card sales.

• In 2007 they raised some £140,000 for Cancer Research UK. This brought the total raised for the charity to £680,000 – supporting activities in Manchester, London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Newcastle, Glasgow, Bristol and Belfast.
• A further £46,000 went to Destination Florida, a UK-registered charity that organises holidays to Florida for seriously ill children aged 7-17 – supported by medical teams of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and carers.

Continental Europe
Thomas Cook Germany supports the children’s welfare organisation Kinder in Not. For the past 30 years it has focused on Tibetan child refugees in Nepal as well as on Nepalese children. Company employees have taken the initiative privately to give up their spare time and holidays without pay to look after almost 400 children at a site near Kathmandu.

Currently the organisation is funding children’s education and training, setting up schools and providing medical care and supplies. We raise money towards these projects through private employee sponsorship and through fundraising activities.

Our 2008 Christmas cards depicted the Kinder in Not school in Kathmandu and money raised through card sales went to the organisation.

Through customer collections, our Belgian brand Neckermann Reisen supports Make a Wish, an organisation which enables seriously ill children to realise their dreams. Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium also sponsored a trip to Mallorca to see Santa Claus.

North America
Our employees raised $1,485.00 towards the Daffodil Campaign which funds cancer research.

We have also contributed to the annual Chum Christmas Wish which provides toys to local underprivileged children. In 2007 employees gathered 300 unopened toys and $1,800.00 in cash donations, which were matched by Thomas Cook North America.

In 2008 we joined forces with the Salvation Army for a very successful combined Christmas food and toy drive. As well as the 30 boxes of food and toys collected, employees raised $1,370 in cash through raffles and donations. Including matched funds from Thomas Cook, a total of $2,740 will be distributed by the Salvation Army to those in need throughout the year. And we donated toys, clothing and food to Santas Anonymous, Angel Tree and the Surrey Food Bank.

We also partner Skyservice to organise their annual Santa flight for the Starlight Foundation which helps severely and often terminally ill children. Our employee volunteers find the fun and gift-filled day very rewarding.

In Canada, our brands have made holiday prize donations to several fundraising initiatives including many in medicine: Winterboob (breast cancer); Princess Margaret Hospital – ovarian cancer; North York General Hospital – cancer research; the Hospital for Sick Children; and Sunnybrook Hospital Foundation – women’s health.

Northern Europe
Our Northern Europe business contributes funds to a variety of organisations in Scandinavia. Among these are the Danish Cancer Society, which works with children; the Norwegian Anti-Drug Addict Association; and Swedish organisations the Home and School Federation and Smokefree Youth.