The Sabre team in Dublin (incorporating members of Sabre Airline Solutions, Product and Systems Delivery, and Lasminute.com Ireland) spread our Give Time Together efforts over 3 separate initiatives:

1. The Enable Ireland 5 Kilometre Run (which had 5 participants) was a community event to raise awareness and funds for people with physical disabilities. [enableireland.ie]
2. A Workplace Blood Drive for the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (which had 4 participants) [ibts.ie], and
3. A Mobile Phone collection/recycling effort for the Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin (which involved much of the Dublin office) helped to raise money for a worthy cause, and helped avoid damage to the environment.
   [childrenshospital.ie]

Thanks to all in the Dublin office who gave of their time (and more besides) for these worthy causes.

The day was a success, it was a very early start for a Saturday but once the morning mist lifted in Battersea and the sun came out over the Pagoda, it turned into a beautiful day.

After the warm up sessions we lined up for the run and it was great that we were wearing our red Sabre t shirts as we stood out from the crowd!

You could immediately spot one of your colleagues, and we were more recognizable for Murray’s wife and 3 daughters & Anke’s friend, Hiken, who cheered us on from the sidelines. After the race was over, we all headed over to the boating lake in Battersea and sat outside drinking coffee & hot chocolate, a reward after the all the exercising!

We all agreed that it had been a productive day and a great start to the weekend.

My previous experience with the Goodwill and other organizations similar to it has been limited to the few visits back while I was in college looking for inexpensive secondhand furniture for my dorm room. Since then, I have made occasional visits to donate items and clothes I don’t use anymore, but without ever really thinking about what happens to those items afterwards.  Enter, the Goodwill Distribution Center.  This 10,000 square foot portion of the facility receives items that are brought in from donation centers located throughout the Metroplex and surrounding area where items are given cleaned, sorted, stacked, folded, hung, and sent out to the stores.  Coming in to the facility from the second floor we could see out across all the different operations, from the loading docks to the sorting stations to the massive steamer in the middle of floor for the clothes – all of it working in synchronization.

            For our project we were asked to help sort items; we were split into two groups, one team for shoes, the other for books.  We spent 3 ½ hours working at our stations sifting through the continuous flow of books; sorting out the books in good condition, and then into children and adult books, hardback and softcover.  The other team sorted, matched and priced shoes. 

visit their homepage at: http://www.goodwill.org/ 

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Sabre Guatemala employees visited CABECITAS DE ALGODON an elderly home in Antigua Guatemala. The place is in charge of Dr. Juan de Dios Aceituno and among other charities he give the elders a warm place to live and all the medical help they need.

There are two homes with 24 elders each one. One of the homes is only for very ill persons, with cancer and other illnesses, and in both homes all the persons have no family to take care of them. Sabre Guatemala selected this place because they are having trouble with the maintenance of the services, rent, medical supplies, etc.
Dr. Aceituno is having many charity events to rise founds so both homes can be open for a long time but is not an easy task. In the past months one of the homes almost closed because of the lack of help from the community.

It is so sad to see how people can help any kind of charities and in some way forget the elders who are living maybe the lasts days of their lives. In some way is good to give something to someone who has given everything to other people.

A group from Sabre’s Hounslow office dedicated an afternoon to cutting brambles back in Hounslow Heath. Most of us were astonished to find out that Hounslow Heath even existed never mind that it was in walking distance of our office. We were told that back in the 1800’s and earlier it was a favourite haunt of highwaymen, the less successful of whom were hanged on the heath.

Nowadays the heath is about 12 square miles in size with heath land, acid grassland, wetland and scrub. It plays an important ecological role and supports a myriad of rare and not so rare flower, insect, amphibian, animal and bird life. The group which included Delphine Lainey (FP&A), Nicky Small (Tax), Rachel Bell (Tax), Steve Savage (TN), Franklin Mac (Tax), Paco Romero (FP&A), Alan McLintock (Tax) and Nevine Hunt (Marketing). Our afternoon was spent in the scrub area cutting back brambles which will allow a variety of different grasses and plants to thrive rather than allowing a single species to dominate the area. The rain held off and we all had an enjoyable and worthwhile afternoon…….Comments from the team include:

“I’ve enjoyed discovering this natural reserve in Hounslow which I had no idea existed”……

“it was definitely ‘back breaking’ work… but good to be out of the office!”……

“my arms and my backs were suffering the following day!!!”.

The Heath conservation staff were very grateful for our time and appreciated our efforts.

 

Further details on the Heath and its background can be found at http://www.hounslow.info/page.aspx?pointerid=9468D0E7494F4C4596B913C00DACAB55&thelang=001lngdef.

For stories of its most famous highway men see http://www.stand-and-deliver.org.uk/hounslow_heath.htm .

National Public Lands Day (NPLD) is the nation’s largest hands-on volunteer effort to improve and enhance the public lands which Americans enjoy.

On the morning of September 29th, the eve of NPLD, twelve fun-loving and very dedicated scrappy volunteers took time out of their busy day to go to the beach! Yes, it was a tough job but somebody had to do it :-).

As part of the Give Time Together Campaign and Travelocity’s Travel for Good program, our group was dedicated to helping clean up the beach at John D. MacArthur Beach State Park in North Palm Beach.

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The Goodwill chapter of the Palm Beaches is making plans to move all its administrative offices into a new building to facilitate the expansion of educational programs for individuals with mental handicaps in its current location.

Well, the new building isn’t exactly “new” but rather a somewhat abandoned building just south of Goodwill’s current administration/training building. A team of Goodwill-contracted workers has been busy preparing the building for occupation over the past several weeks.

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A team of volunteers from the Travelocity North Palm Beach office and Sabre, including 5 children, visited Darcy Hall Nursing Home on Thursday, September 28.

We took the residents on a virtual tour (video) of the Caribbean islands. Our friend, The Roaming Gnome, was witness to the fun and games, stylishly decked in his Caribbean attire and swimming trunks. He was wonderfully surprised to discover that he was no stranger to the audience… But that didn’t stop him from putting in some extra effort to charm his way into their hearts

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It was a “HOT” Friday morning when about 20 volunteers from Sabre all dressed in red Sabre T-Shirts assembled in front of “Vidhana Soudha” (which is where the state assembly is situated) to show our support to all those affected by “Alzheimer’s Disease”.

This was part of the World Alzheimer’s Day Rally organized by ARDS (Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India) in association with Nightingales Medical Trust - a charity organization providing support services to senior citizens.

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MS Santa Barbara - Rene with the two helpful machines, Rene and Diane outside the MS Santa Barbara office, and Diane and Rene with the office staff.