Every year the Staff Council donates ten per cent of the profit generated from the sales of the Gift Shop to a charity.
Despite the decrease in the shop’s revenues due to the pandemic, the Staff Council, in their meeting of 9 March 2022, decided to donate EUR 40,000.00 to different humanitarian organisations providing urgent relief to people in need. EUR 10,000.00 have been donated to the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, UNHCR and SOS Kinderdorf respectively.
In the past, donations were made to the Lebanese Red Cross, following the Beirut port explosion; "Balsam Projekt" supporting Syrian women and children who live as refugees in Antakya, Turkey; Austrian NGOs (Caritas, Diakonie); "Kilimanjaro Initiative" in Kenya; an orphanage home and school in Begoro, Ghana; a children gym in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina; and to the victims of natural disasters (Austrian flood victims).
The Staff Union also supported UN colleagues affected by the terrorist attack on UN facilities in Abuja, Nigeria; the locally recruited ESCWA, UNIFIL and UNDP colleagues affected by the port explosion in Beirut; UNODC colleagues in Ukraine; and the family of a UNODC colleague in Afghanistan.
The details about the charity donations are available in Staff Union's annual reports.
