giving back to the community

As we are holiday shopping for our loved ones, the holiday season is also about giving back to communities and organizations in need. Whether the charity or charities of your choice are local, national or international, it’s a privilege to be in a position to be able to provide a donation.

Have you heard about Beyond Miles?

Beyond Miles links Aeroplan Members to ten outstanding Canadian not-for-profit organizations dedicated to improving lives and enriching communities at home and around the world. Aeroplan Members can donate miles online at Aeroplan.com/donate to the following organizations to help them offset costs related to travel:

David Suzuki Foundation

Engineers Without Borders

Free The Children

Médecins Sans Frontières

MusiCounts

The Stephen Lewis Foundation

Schools Without Borders

The Air Canada Foundation

Veterinarians without Borders

War Child Canada

Aeroplan Members can also automatically donate two per cent of all miles accumulated to any Beyond Miles partner of their choice. Simply visit their profile page on Aeroplan.com, select the donation opt-in and the Beyond Miles partner they would like their miles to go to.

Here are a few other charities you can donate to:

Lifeline Syria

Lifeline Syria is a community engagement initiative which will recruit, train and assist sponsor groups to welcome and support 1000 Syrian Refugees coming to Canada over the next two years.

Give a Mile

How great would it feel to know you helped make a flight of compassion happen? Give a Mile’s goal is to provide 1 Billion miles of customer loyalty program points to those in need of visiting with a loved one who is critically ill or dealing with palliative illness.

War Child Canada

Members can donate miles to War Child Canada which helps protect and restore childhood in war zones by providing education, opportunity and justice programs where they are needed most.

The Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada – Ontario Chapter

Each year, thousands of Canadian children between the ages of 3 and 17 are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Since 1984, The Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada has worked tirelessly to grant exceptional wishes to over 20,000 children and their families. This year, Children’s Wish expects to grant 1,200 new wishes and with the help of volunteers and generous donors, is able to grant nearly three wishes every day. Each wish is an individual adventure, carefully structured to meet the needs of a particular child and family.

Feeding Nunavut

Feeding Nunavut is an independent, non-partisan advocacy and educational organization whose purpose is to improve the well-being of people in the Canadian North, specifically Nunavut. The organization’s focus is to address food insecurity and the challenging living conditions in Nunavut, and to work with other organizations to support programs involved with poverty, hunger, housing, education, health, and mental health.

RAVEN

RAVEN is trying to raise 300K miles. If they reach 90% of their goal, Aeroplan will donate the final 10%!

Charitable Pooling

Know of an organization or person who needs specific help in your community? Aeroplan’s Charitable Pooling Program supports individuals and organizations at the local level. Using a pool of donated Aeroplan Miles, the charity may redeem within the Aeroplan Program, for example, for travel, car rental, hotel stays and merchandise.

In some cases, community members may use this pooling option to help an individual in dire need of assistance for medical purposes or a family emergency. An account is established in the name of the charity, which enables them to pool donated Aeroplan Miles at no cost. To donate, please visit: aeroplan.com/donate.

Just this weekend, Aeroplan’s program reached a huge milestone; Aeroplan Members have now donated more than 500 million Miles to the Beyond Miles program since its launch in 2006! In 2015, Aeroplan donated 1 million miles to each of its partner organizations.

Aeroplan’s Beyond Miles program and other community investment initiatives can found on Twitter. For more information, visit beyondmiles.aeroplan.com. Here are more ways you can give back this holiday season.