Stena Line rounds up for charity

For the third year in a row Stena Line launches a donation campaign in favour of the non-profit organisation Mercy Ships life-changing work, bringing free medical care to where it’s needed the most with their floating hospital Africa Mercy. During the month of October guests travelling onboard Stena Line ferries are given the opportunity to donate by rounding up every purchase. All donations during the campaign will be matched by the UK Government.

The campaign “Round Up for Charity” will be live onboard Stena Line’s 37 ferries in Europe during the month of October. Guests travelling with Stena Line are given the opportunity to round up every onboard purchase in restaurants, bars, cafés and shops. To round off the campaign, Stena Line will round up the donated amount as well. The full amount will be donated to the life-changing work of Mercy Ships, bringing free medical care to some of the poorest countries in the world.

“In October more than 500,000 people are travelling onboard Stena Line’s ferries in Europe and if everyone contributes with something, we will easily exceed last year’s donation of 200,000 Swedish kronor (SEK)”, says Erik Lewenhaupt, Head of Sustainability, Brand & Communication at Stena Line.

This year the Stena Line and Mercy Ship campaign is part of the UK Aid Match initiative #changetheodds and all donations during the campaign will be matched by the UK government*.

Mercy Ships floating hospital the Africa Mercy is currently in the port of Dakar, Senegal. She arrived in August 2019 and will stay throughout June 2020. Every donation will make a great difference and an example of this is that less than 1,500 SEK is enough to give one person their eyesight back with a simple cataract eye-operation.

Since the start in 1976 Mercy Ships have provided close to 50,000 eye operations. One of the patients is Monique from Cameroon who lost her sight from cataract at six years of age, stopping her from attending school. At the age of nine a simple eye-operation onboard Mercy Ships changed her life in less than 20 minutes, and she got her eyesight back. Soon she could return to school and her future is bright, in more than one way. Read more at https://www.mercyships.org.uk/who-we-serve/patient-stories/monique/

A successful partnership

Stena Line and the non-governmental organisation Mercy Ships initiated a partnership in 2017 and have since then run several donation campaigns together onboard Stena Line’s ferries raising more than 350,000 SEK in total. Stena Line has also initiated their own volunteer programme, offering employees the opportunity to apply for volunteer positions onboard Africa Mercy for a period of 2-6 months. The Stena Line volunteers are guaranteed leave of absence and the cost for transportation and vaccinations is covered by the company.

“The partnership with Mercy Ships is an important part of Stena Line’s corporate social responsibility and engages everyone from the management to our employees working onboard, but also our guests and partners which we a proud of” adds Lewenhaupt.

*Donations received between the 1^st of October and the 31^st of December will be matched by the UK government. Read more at https://www.mercyships.org.uk/changetheodds/

NOTE TO EDITOR: For further information please contact Ciara Kinkead of Duffy Rafferty Communications on Belfast (028) 9073 0880.