Viva, Viva Foundation Executing On Mission To Make The Sky More Inclusive For Colombians

Continuing a four-year-old tradition, Colombian ultra-low-cost airline Viva along with its Viva Foundation nonprofit collaborated during the month of October to bring more opportunities to Colombians, both in the air and across the country through its Go Pink initiative.

During October, which Viva has designated as the pink month, the company implemented the ‘Manos a la obra’ (hands to work) campaign, focusing on three fundamental pillars:

1. Promoting inclusion, through training programs for decent employment with which, so far, 17 young people have already been trained around the country as flight attendants.
2. The care of the environment, being founding allies of the Animal Bank, the first bank for biodiversity in Colombia and, finally,
3. Generating social impact with its yellow heart flights, with which Viva and the Foundation have benefited more than 120,000 people so far in 2022.

To these three terrestrial programs, an aerial experience was added, this time aboard the ‘Pink Giant’, one of the company’s fleet of Airbus A320 aircraft. There, the passengers had a flight full of surprises and messages of breast cancer prevention by the crew, who were trained in the realization of self-examination and warning signs for the early detection of the disease that afflicts thousands of Colombian women.

Viva & the Viva Foundation already have 17 flight attendants working that have graduated from the Manos a la Obra initiative.

“Since the beginning of Viva’s operations, every year we commemorate ‘the pink month’, carrying through the air a message of hope and prevention through the skies. This year, with our “Let’s get to work” campaign we wanted to go further, seeking to raise awareness around issues such as gender equality, inclusion and diversity with the global agenda and its sustainable development goals. With these types of projects we have not only challenged the status quo and innovated in training and hiring processes, but we have also provided new opportunities to young people around the country who live in conditions of vulnerability. To this is added the positive environmental impacts that we have achieved from the Viva Foundation, the social arm of the airline,” said Tatiana Vásquez, the Viva Foundation executive director.

Viva is the only airline in Colombia that has its own nonprofit foundation, which is dedicated to the work for the social, economic and environmental development of the country. Among the beneficiaries of its initiatives, are the 17 graduates of the training program for flight attendants ‘Viva Sin Límites’, who are already matriculating into the ranks of Viva’s flight crew.

Next year, Viva Sin Limites hope to announce a new call for additional participants in this project, which will be open to the public so that more young people can access new job opportunities and thus further the foundation’s mission of inclusion both in the skies and throughout Colombia.

In other progress, Viva announced the training and hiring of 34 new agents for its Monteria contact center operations, executed in collaboration with Konecta, the airline’s passenger experience provider.  Mothers, heads of households, and young people without experience are key members of this team that reaffirms Viva’s commitment to breaking down the barriers of employability, where according to the most recent data from the Colombian statistics agency DANE, 27% of its young people neither study nor work.

These initiatives add to the positive impact that Viva is achieving through its foundation, the social arm with which it seeks to generate opportunities for education, inclusion and care for biodiversity. Currently, the foundation’s investments amount to more than two billion pesos in activities and projects that have directly benefited about 240,000 people in different departments of the country.