• Partnering with Batik Boutique to supply medical workers with PPE and provide livelihood for women from low-income backgrounds

• Raised RM171,966 through digital donation drive to help those in need

• Benefited 3,095 families including Orang Asli, people without permanent shelter and refugee communities

With travel restrictions in place, AirAsia Foundation is undergoing a digital transformation that sees it tap on e-commerce, digital fund-raising and e-learning channels to meet its regional mandate

The implementation of quarantine measures and social distancing has dramatically changed how we live and how we work. The world of philanthropy is no less affected. At AirAsia Foundation, it has not only changed the way we work. It has also changed our scope of work.

AirAsia Foundation was set up to address three pillars. First is to support the growth of social enterprises in ASEAN through grant-giving and mentorship of our grantees. However, with travel bans in place, the latter has ground to halt, forcing the cancellation of workshops we had planned. This leaves us to focus on growing Destination GOOD, our commercial arm which retails social enterprise products by more than 50 organisations. 

Social Enterprise Support

Although our flagship store in Kuala Lumpur has had to shutter during Malaysia’s Movement Control Order (MCO) period, our online store at DestinationGOOD.com continues to do business, expanding even to a sub-outlet on OURSHOP.com, another AirAsia-backed e-commerce portal. With delivery services proliferating, we have been able to continue selling quarantine essentials produced by social enterprises, from food and children’s books to personal hygiene products. 

Our latest effort sees us partner with local social enterprise Batik Boutique to help provide livelihood for women from low-income backgrounds by producing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for frontliners. Retailing at RM25, the exclusive PPE sets are already available at DestinationGOOD.com and the public can purchase it as a gift to medical staff at selected hospitals. Besides the locally-made PPE - which AirAsia is also sourcing for operational use - Destination GOOD also retails new Batik Boutique products such as batik face masks and batik colouring kits for homeschooling.

Humanitarian Fund-Raising

While Covid-19 did not change our broad digital strategy, MCO limitations definitely speeded up its implementation. Beyond e-commerce, AirAsia Foundation is also transforming the way it addresses its humanitarian concerns. 

Since 2012, AirAsia Foundation has raised over RM14 million in aid of post-disaster rehabilitation programmes in ASEAN. These donations were mainly raised by AirAsia cabin crew who carried donation boxes on our flights. During AirAsia’s hibernation, our latest donation drive was carried out exclusively on airasiafoundation.com and on financial services platform BigPay.

Through small donations via credit card payments, online bank transfers and person-to-person donations, the drive raised over RM170,000 in a month from 1st to 30th April 2020, a significant increase from past online donations. Digital donations have also simplified the work of financial reconciliation, enabling AirAsia Foundation to distribute aid monies within a week of receiving the donations. This has enabled speedy giving at a crucial time when thousands are going hungry after losing daily wages. 

Throughout the MCO period, we have been able to provide basic essentials for more than 3,000 families from the Orang Asli and Orang Asal communities, B40 families, people without permanent shelter, migrant workers and refugees, as well as differently-abled individuals. 

Anti-Trafficking Initiative

A third way that Covid-19 has precipitated realignment is in our anti-trafficking initiative. Starting 2017, AirAsia Foundation has been organising classroom trainings for AirAsia cabin crew to recognise, report and record cases cases of human trafficking on our flights. While live training has been highly effective in engaging participants, Covid-19 resource crunches has necessitated a rethink on how best to deploy our resources. This is why we are transitioning fully to e-learning. With classroom training, we had enough trainers to reach some cabin crew in Kuala Lumpur each month. With digital learning, we can reach cabin crew, pilots, ground and security staff based in any of AirAsia’s 24 hubs across the network.

This, thus, frees up our resources post-quarantine to focus on developing the next phase of our anti-trafficking initiative to provide helpline information in multiple languages through the use of chatbots and AI technologies.

It is too soon to say how the world will emerge from this crisis but from our perspective, an unexpected silver lining to the changes we experienced is the gain in efficiency and scale. In time, we hope to be able to reintegrate our personal touch for more effective philanthropy.

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About AirAsia Foundation

AirAsia Foundation is committed to helping build an ASEAN Community of the future by advocating social entrepreneurship, equal opportunity, and innovation. As the philanthropic arm of the AirAsia Group, it provides social enterprise grants to empower underprivileged individuals, and supports projects that preserve and revive the region’s unique cultural heritage. Since its establishment in 2012, it has funded 28 social enterprises, creating an impact in the lives of over 2,800 direct beneficiaries. For more information, go to https://www.airasiafoundation.com.