A 349th Air Mobility Wing (AMW) aircrew from Travis Air Force Base, California, opened the tail of their C-17 Globemaster III September 24 at Port Au Prince, Haiti, and delivered a non-military cargo load: three yellow school buses.
The three buses will help Haitian children to school safely, which became a priority for Those Angels, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) located in Oakland.
“I’m very grateful for Travis Air Force Base stepping up,” said Claude Joseph, founder of Those Angels. “We just made one phone call and it took off from there.”
Fortunately, when airmen at Travis received Joseph’s call, they were no strangers to the Denton Humanitarian Assistance Program. According to U.S. Transportation Command, the program helps move humanitarian cargo donated by U.S.-based NGOs “to developing nations to ease human suffering.”
Active-duty aircrews at the 60th AMW have delivered numerous aid packages under the program over the past few years, including one that delivered 90,000 pounds of aid to Honduras in August. When it was determined that their aircrews were not available for the mission to Haiti, they turned to their Reserve partners at the 349th AMW to deliver the golden payload.