|
Airline Ambassadors provides volunteer escorts for children coming to the United States for medical care that their families cannot afford or is not available in their home countries. Additionally, we escort orphaned children from around the world to their new families.
This program is a unique and rewarding way for airline personnel to volunteer since it not only provides a valuable service but it also provides a chance to connect personally and to act as a guardian for an often sick and frightened child.
We have escorted thousands of children, and many of these trips were for necessary medical care.
To be a child's escort, one must be a member of Airline Ambassadors and be eligible for airline passes.
It is preferable that you are a current airline employee and eligible for high priority passes. Escort trips range from 1 to 3 days.
Escorting is not for everyone. You must be flexible, quick thinking, and resourceful. It is not easy to take a medically fragile child from his mother's arms and fly away to a far distant land. You will have the frightened child in one arm, carry-on bags in the other, and the mother sobbing in the background as you make your way through security and onto the airplane.
But then, suddenly the child calms down and begins to bond to you. You then realize what an important role you are playing in restoring a child to good health and your trip then becomes wonderfully rewarding. We have found that most escorts who bring these sick children to the U.S. ask to return them to their families once their treatment is complete. Although most of our escort trips are to accompany medically fragile children, we do sometimes escort orphaned children to their forever families. Playing "stork" for a day simply defies description as you hand over the little one to his excited new family.
Airline companies provide Airline Ambassadors with positive space tickets to children coming back and forth to the U.S. for medical care. We especially want to thank American Airlines' Miles for Kids In Need program. Since our escorts use their passes to accompany these children, there is a considerable savings for our non-profit agency partners who arrange for their care.
Interested in becoming an escort?
Escort Stories Link...
"A Mission within a Mission"
February Escort Mission - El Salvador to Shriner's Hospital - read more in the "News"...
» Read Escort Stories from the field
How can I become involved?
- Become a Member - Your membership not only gives you access to all of AAI's Missions and Projects, but also helps with the high cost of logistics, storage, acquisition, transportation and other services of the aid that we provide for emergency and chronic disaster relief.
Reminder: An unprecedented 98% of all donated funds go directly AAI authorized projects! Further, every dollar contributed is leveraged to produce over $45 worth of aid. Your generous donation is truly being spent as intended.
» See our Annual Report
mmwhitehead3@aol.com
|
