Doctors Without Borders launches a travelling site for humanitarian aid

Doctors Without Borders keeps awareness campaigns and this year the organisation has mixed two concepts in one: travelling and humanitarian aid. Based on this idea, the site "Volando va" (Flying it) was created. It’s a website that appears like a travelling site to the users where they decide how much they would like to donate and sends it to the project they choose.  Accordingly, as the campaign slogan says: "the first travelling site in which you don't travel, but your donation does". Donations for pregnant women so they don’t die while giving birth in Syria, emergency surgery in Yemen, vaccines against cholera, measles or pneumonia in South Sudan or resources to help the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are some of the projects donors can get involved with.

"The site volandova.com offers a wide range of destinations nobody would like to travel to". With this message, the humanitarian aid organisation wanted to highlight that the offered destinations are not idyllic islands, tropical forests nor luxury resorts to go and spend two weeks on holiday there, but countries in need of emergency aid, not tourists. "They don't ask you to come, we ask you to go", the website claims. Every flight includes essential equipment to provide urgent cover to those countries that need it. According to MSF, every donation will contribute to put together humanitarian kits in order to help the most vulnerable people.

The appearance of the website reminds of an airline homepage where the origin and the destination can be chosen. Moreover, the tab by which the user can choose the ticket offers a variety of fares to donate: Standard Ticket (5€), Medium Ticket (10€), Plus Ticket (15€) or the individual quantity the user would like to donate. One of the characteristics of this initiative is the fact that the donators can clearly see where is their money going.

Volandova.com has also started a Secret Santa modality for these days, close to Christmas holidays, in which every user can anonymously give away a "trip" to a friend. Once the donation is made, a gift code will be sent to the available email address as well as a downloadable file that symbolizes a boarding pass.

This travelling site was created to be an alternative to the usual communication of NGOs. From Congo, Yemen or Ethiopia, Doctors Without Borders helps threatened people in military conflicts, violence, epidemics, forgotten diseases, natural disasters or medical aid exclusion. Nowadays, MSF has 6 million members that collaborate with the organisation and aid the whole project.