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The UPS Foundation
Delivering Aid on Time
The UPS Foundation has been one of UNHCR's leading corporate partners since 2010, when the two entered into a multi-year agreement to improve the refugee agency's emergency logistics. Under this formal partnership, UNHCR became one of the main beneficiaries of UPS donations for humanitarian causes. This help has played an important part in ensuring the success of UNHCR emergency operations in several countries, including in Africa and the Middle East.
Since the launch of the partnership, the UPS Foundation, philanthropic arm of global package delivery company UPS, has contributed total funding and in-kind support of more than US$2 million in value. This includes a donation of US$775,000 in April 2014, which has helped fund several projects.
The UPS Foundation contributes logistical expertise, funds and services to support and enhance UNHCR's emergency response by providing training to UNHCR staff and partners, freight services to transport critical relief supplies, and flexible funding that can be accessed quickly and used to provide critical aid and assistance during fast-breaking emergencies.
As a founding member of UNHCR's Innovation Circle, UPS is also working to enhance the agency's distribution, tracking and delivery of essential supplies to millions of refugees and displaced people, even in the most challenging environments. By improving the capacity and efficiency of UNHCR's logistical systems, services such as the delivery of food and non-food items to refugees will be improved. This will also save UNHCR resources, which can be deployed to save more lives elsewhere.
Since the partnership began, the UPS Foundation has played an important role in supporting UNHCR's response to humanitarian emergencies. In early 2013, the partnership supported UNHCR's Syria crisis response by transporting relief supplies to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Later that year, the Foundation provided cash assistance for tents, solar-powered lanterns and protection kits to support UNHCR's response to Typhoon Haiyan, which displaced 4 million people in the Philippines. In 2012, UPS transported aid to Mauritania for thousands of Malians seeking refuge and funded internal charter flights carrying shelter and other non-food aid for almost 100,000 Sudanese refugees. In 2011, the Foundation gave critical support to UNHCR's response to the Libya displacement crisis.
