A charitable idea takes flight among attendants

Christmas seemed to come early at the Casa del Niño day-care center in this poor village named after St. Nick.

"Just a second, darling," says Jacki Foster in a kind Southern drawl. She is one of a dozen well-coiffed American women towering over cafeteria tables packed with anxious children. "Now, here's your package, sweetheart."

They are distributing goody bags with the efficiency and grace of well-seasoned flight attendants - which, in fact, these women are. They are here as representatives of Airline Ambassadors (AA), a Dallas-based nonprofit whose members have traveled to 44 countries and delivered more than $10 million in aid.

The group has a long reach: In Nepal, AA members have trekked through the Himalayas to deliver medicine to remote clinics. In Ecuador, an 8-year-old girl who lost her arms in an accident received prosthetic limbs thanks to the efforts of one ambassador. And in South Africa, seeds were delivered to help cultivate much-needed crops.

"We like to call it 'traveling to make a difference' or 'traveling to do good,' " says founder and president Nancy Rivard, an American Airlines flight attendant.

Ms. Rivard first came up with idea while mourning the death of her father and looking for a new direction in her life. "I had been traveling the world and saw all the things that people needed," she says.

Realizing her vision was not easy; airlines continually turned down her requests for donations, and very few colleagues expressed interest. At first, Rivard made trips on her own, delivering toiletries collected from hotels to the poor in Bosnia and escorting a Guatemalan girl to the US for heart surgery. Word of Rivard's humanitarian efforts soon filtered through the airline industry, drawing volunteers.

AA was launched officially as a nonprofit organization in 1997 (see www.airlineamb.org). The group now has more than 3,000 members, mostly airline employees from the ranks of American, United, Northwest, and others.

"We hand deliver the aid. We don't leave it at the airport. We don't send it in the mail. We go with it and see it delivered. It's very rewarding," Rivard says.

Members say that their easy access to cheap plane tickets and their global contacts have provided them with the stimulus to put more and more missions into action.

"Being an airline employee, I have searched for exactly what AA offers for many years," says United Airlines flight attendant Deborah Quigley. "I never dreamed that my life could be so useful and capable and contribute to less fortunate people of the world. This is how AA has empowered me, and I am totally committed."

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