How donations from guests at Starwood Hotels are helping fund
UNICEF’s work with orphans and vulnerable children
Mattias, Namayo, Divona and Harrison Muotcha
outside their home near Blantyre, Malawi
© UNICEF UK/2007
Malawi/Fran Coyle
In a village near Blantyre, Malawi,
16-year-old Mattias Muotcha has been the head of his family and
household for six years. His parents passed away in 2001 and 2002,
leaving the then 10-year-old child to look after his three siblings,
Harrison (now 15), Divona (13) and Namayo (6).
He had to drop out of school and rely on support from his grandmother
and other relatives. Mattias, who seems older than his years, says that
although his siblings are all well behaved, looking after them is a
huge responsibility.
Luckily, thanks to a partnership between UNICEF UK and Starwood Hotels,
the Muotcha family are now getting the help they need. UNICEF Malawi
regularly delivers food and other supplies to the family. The children
attend the nearby Khombwe Children’s Corner, supported by UNICEF, where
they can play and socialise, receive a basic education, have a hot meal
and just be children again. “Going to the Children’s Corner allows me to
forget my problems,” Divona says.
Long-term relationship
The partnership between UNICEF and Starwood Hotels and Resorts
Worldwide (then Sheraton) goes back to 1995. Called ‘Check Out for
Children’, it was the brainchild of Robert Scott, Starwood’s Senior Vice
President and General Counsel, Europe, Africa and Middle East Division.
Robert was negotiating the management contract for a new luxury hotel in
Ethiopia and was struck by the contrast with the poverty that existed
nearby. He thought that guests might feel the same way and would
appreciate the opportunity to give something back at the end of their
stay. The idea, which he successfully sold to the company’s Board of
Directors, was to ask guests to make a voluntary donation of $1 to
UNICEF when they checked out and paid their bill.
“I thought it was perfectly possible for a Sheraton guest to fly in to
Addis Ababa on business class, take a taxi to the hotel and see on the
way the poverty that exists in the city,” Robert explains. “It might
make an impression on them and they might think ‘I’d like to be able to
help’ but then they get home, go back to their busy lives and they just
don’t know where to start.
“So I started thinking about the mechanism of adding a dollar to the
bill, with the guest’s permission, which makes it completely simple for
them to do something,” he adds.
Robert chose UNICEF as the charity partner for Starwood because of its
global reach, integrity, name recognition and non-political,
non-religious standpoint. “I just thought that it matched our brand
really well,” he says.
Business benefits
Christine Edier from UNICEF Geneva joins Starwood
employees in their sponsored bike ride from Amsterdam to Brussels
©
UNICEF Holland/Starwood Hotels/2006
The partnership brings several benefits to
both brands. For Starwood, these include the association with UNICEF,
positive response from guests and opportunities for employee involvement
and motivation.
“We’ve had a great buy-in from employees, who have come up with some
very creative fund raising ideas,” Robert says. “One of our employees in
the Netherlands had the idea of a bike ride from Amsterdam to Brussels.
It ended up involving four hundred riders and raised more than €250,000
for UNICEF. These kinds of things boost morale and allow our employees
to feel that they’re doing something good in the world.”
For UNICEF, the benefits include the chance to reach millions of
Starwood guests with awareness and fundraising activities. Since 1995,
donations from Check Out for Children have raised over US $21 million,
helping UNICEF to immunise a million children against preventable
diseases in many countries, including China, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia,
Georgia, Nigeria, Peru and Zimbabwe.
In Ethiopia, Starwood guest donations have enabled UNCEF to expand
immunisation activities in remote areas of the country, including
training health workers and providing equipment. In 2004 in Gabon,
Starwood guests’ donations and employee fundraising activities funded
the vaccination of every child between 6 months and 14 years old against
measles.
“The individual donations are small but because of the large numbers of
guests involved, we’ve raised a significant amount for UNICEF’s work,”
Jo Andrews, Check Out for Children Manager at UNICEF UK, comments.
Materials produced by UNICEF are presented to guests at various points
during their stay in a Starwood hotel. “Whenever a guest checks into a
hotel they are handed a flyer about Check Out for Children,” Jo
continues. “We have a number of other touch points around the hotel:
there are tent cards at reception, there are posters in the elevators
and in other public areas of the hotel and, from December, a special
feature outlining the benefits of the programme will be available to
guests through Starwood’s Guest TV Channel.”
Broadening the brand
In 1998, Sheraton become part of the Starwood Hotels group and
expanded to include several new brands. The partnership with UNICEF has
kept pace, with a range of different projects now funded through the
different hotel brands. These include: Sheraton hotels, which is
supporting projects helping orphans and vulnerable children; Four Points
by Sheraton hotels, which support projects that help prevent the
mother-to-child transmission of HIV; Westin Hotels and Resorts, which
support water and sanitation projects; and Luxury Collection hotels,
which support malaria prevention and treatment.
“When we started Check Out for Children, we were a much smaller company
and all the money went to immunisation,” Robert explains. “We now have
nine different brands and decided to support different areas of UNICEF’s
work. So we’ve tried to find programmes that matched the profile of
each participating brand.
“For example, Sheraton is all about warm comforting connections: we say
that you don’t just stay at Sheraton, you belong,” he continues. “So we
thought that Children’s Corners would be a great project for Sheraton
guests to support because the Children’s Corners are where orphans and
vulnerable children can go to ‘connect’. These are kids who don’t really
belong because they have lost their families and have little or no
support, so we thought it would be a perfect match.”
Children’s corners
Children have fun playing on the slides and
swings at the Khombwe Children’s Corner
© UNICEF UK/Malawi 2007/
Frances Coyle
Back in Malawi, the programme is already
having a major impact, as Robert and Jo found out when they visited the
country in 2007.
Many of the children who go to Children’s Corners have been orphaned
by HIV and AIDs and are living with extended family members, or in
child-headed households like the Muotchas. “The Children’s Corner is
sometimes the only opportunity for a child in that situation to put down
their responsibilities for a few hours, spend time with other children
and enjoy age-related activities,” Jo says. “When we were there, we saw
children skipping, painting or playing on slides and swings.
“UNICEF is supporting local community initiatives to develop the centres
and provide facilities,” she continues. We’ve funded the construction
of buildings and playgrounds, supplied toys and materials and trained
social workers to provide psychosocial support for the children.”
Robert agrees. “We were really moved by what we saw there because we
realised how badly these children need the centres,” he says. “They’ve
been robbed of a normal childhood but the Children’s Corners give them a
chance to be kids again.”
Success story
Check Out for Children has been a fantastic experience for all
involved: Starwood, UNICEF and of course the children who ultimately
benefit through the projects. The partnership continues to go from
strength to strength and has just been extended to another brand: Le
Meridien Hotels.
“It’s been a huge plus for Starwood and a tremendously rewarding
experience for me personally,” Robert says. “We’re delighted to have
such a great partner in UNICEF. These programmes are only as good as
their delivery and UNICEF has been impeccable in the way they spend the
money and control expenses. It’s a very well run organisation and we’re
happy to have them as a partner.”
Mattias Muotcha and his young family would doubtless agree.
Andy Brown is Senior Web Editor at UNICEF UK