Welcome to our blog for a very special case!

It is confirmed from today - we (Sheraton Abu Dhabi Hotel & Resort) are physically travelling to Tanzania to use our charity funds for the 81 children at the "Glorious Orphanage" in Arusha, Tanzania!

Let us give you a little bit of background regarding this outstanding project:

The Sheraton Abu Dhabi Hotel & Resort has been doing a lot of charity work locally and internationally within the last years. From collecting bottle caps for wheelchairs to sponosoring a child in South Africa for lifetime, we are very active in giving back to the community.

One of our fund raising projects is the “Embassy Charity Fund” – whereby instead of sending gifts or flowers to the UAE based Ambassadors for their National Day felicitations, we are donating a certain amount to a charity account. Within the last two years, we managed to collect around a substantial amount with this project.

Another initiative of ours is the “No e-mail Day” where all Department Heads in the hotel should refrain from sending e-mail one day a week. Should any of us fail to do so, we pay a voluntary fee per e-mail. We managed to collect around 11.000 AED in 2011 which will also be used for this initiative.

We have been researching a worthy cause and finally found an organization which really needs charity donations: the “Glorious Orphanage” in Arusha, Tanzania.

In this private-led orphanage, 81 children without parents found a home, basic education and they just started to build a very basic school from the multiple donations received in the recent years :

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Glorious-Orphanage/197696586919551

In order to provide basics to those children, such as school furniture, a chalk board, socks, underwear, toys, books, crayons, blankets etc., we have decided to send a “delegation” of two persons from the Senior Management team (including myself) on site to bring useful gifts for the children and help with the setup of the orphanage.

We are very very excited about the project and are planning our trip on Sunday, 19^th of February 2012, which is in less than three weeks!

So, with this blog, we would like to keep you updated on the project, on the challenges along the way, how charities work in that part of the world and how an Abu Dhabi based individual hotel is flying abroad to help the ones REALLY in need. Keep you posted!