GoHelp – helping people

We take advantage of our logistics expertise and global presence to provide disaster relief together with strong partners. The partnership with the United Nations is an expression of our social commitment, which we support in numerous projects all over the world.

We work in close co-operation with the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to provide logistics support in the aftermath of natural disasters. To save lives, relief goods must be distributed quickly and properly. Our global network of Disaster Response Teams can be deployed within 72 hours to deliver help at airports free of charge. After the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, our regional DHL Disaster Response Team was in place just two days after the disaster struck. In September 2009, we set up operations at airports in three different locations in Asia following the tropical storms in the Philippines, the Samoan tsunami and the Indonesian earthquake. In November 2009, we provided logistics advice to the local authorities in El Salvador to set up relief operations logistics after Hurricane Ida.

Together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), we operate the programme GARD (Get Airports Ready for Disaster) to prepare local authorities and airport staff for emergency situations. In the year under review, we successfully completed two pilot projects in Indonesia. Further training in high-risk areas of Asia and Latin America are to follow.

Since 2006, we have been supporting the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in relief projects in Peru, Kenya and India. Our partnership focuses on child survival with an emphasis on healthcare, early child development, diet and hygiene initiatives. By the end of 2009, Deutsche Post DHL had collected sufficient donations equalling funding of 50,000 vaccinations, protecting children against deadly and preventable diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria and polio.