What does DHL Global Forwarding do?

DHL Global Forwarding is part of Deutsche Post DHL and belongs to the DHL group. The group contains various transport entities, such as DHL Express, also known as the couriers who pick up small parcels and deliver them as quickly as possible. You also have DHL Supply Chain, responsible for warehouse solutions, and DHL Freight, responsible for freight shipments throughout Europe. And then you have us, DHL Global Forwarding. We are responsible for air and sea freight worldwide and freight transport by train from and to the Far East.

Why Mobile School?

We were charmed by the initiative right from the start, because Arnoud talks about the mobile school so passionately. As a large company, we believe that we have a societal role to play and that we therefore have a social responsibility in various areas.

We therefore also have 3 social pillars on which we focus: Go Green, Go Teach and Go Help. Go Green means that we reduce the environmental burden. For example, we work on trucks that can run on electricity. An example of Go Help is our 'response disaster team'. We have a logistics team ready that can leave immediately when a disaster breaks out in the world. They set up the logistics on site and ensure that the shipments and relief goods reach the people in need.

Go Teach is also highly appreciated. Children are very important to us, because the children of today are our employees of tomorrow. And in that area Mobile School delivers good work. Mobile School takes initiatives that enable street children to grow and get opportunities. The problem is only getting worse, just think of the many refugee camps, where many children live. Mobile School is also committed to helping these children and DHL has therefore decided to continue to support Mobile School as long as we can allocate budgets to the project.

Does this create added value for DHL Global Forwarding?

For the people working at DHL, the cooperation with Mobile School is certainly an added value. We are proud that we can do this. The photos and videos that you send are published in our internal magazine and so everyone knows that we have contributed to helping children around the world.

What does a shipment entail?

First we pick up your packed school. At that moment it is airfreightworthy. In our warehouse we handle the shipment which is identified with an airway bill number so everyone knows where the shipment travels to. In the meantime, we contact the office of destination regarding the necessary documentation. This way we can arrange customs formalities there. The local street workers are also informed and prepared for this. They know on which flight the shipment arrives and which documents they need to get customs clearance.

Everyone in the warehouse knows the mobile school, especially after you introduced the school to our employees. All employees then had the opportunity to discover what is being transported in these boxes and they could view the different panels on the mobile school. There were a lot of positive reactions!

How do you see the partnership in the future?

Actually we would like to continue working just the way things go now, because communication and aligning are going smoothly and we know what budget we need to plan on the basis of your forecast. The only thing we can work on is the external visibility; make sure to capture and publish these moments in the media. For example by publishing a message ourselves when a mobile school is shipped or when it has arrived. That is something that we have to work on, because people do not know that DHL Global Forwarding supports good causes. That’s why we will work on that aspect.

Thank you very much for all those years of collaboration. We hope that we will be able to ship many more mobile schools in the future, together with DHL Global Forwarding.

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