JetBlue Airways provided free flights to Virginia for 46 students from the University of the Bahamas-North campus who were affected by Hurricane Dorian so they can attend Hampton University this fall. All 46 arrived on campus Sept. 24.
Icema Gibbs, JetBlue’s director of corporate social responsibility, discussed how the airline got involved with the initiative to help the students.
How did the plan to help the students who were affected by Hurricane Dorian come about?
We had an email from one of our board members, Joel Peterson, and he forwarded me or he had his admins connect me with a gentleman by the name of Nick James, who used to work with Joel. He knew that Joel was on our board and he said, “I have this situation. I think it would be great if JetBlue could help.”
How did JetBlue become a part of this collaboration?
Around Sept. 14, I think, is when we got the first email that Nick knew somebody who was working with Hampton to try to get these students to Hampton and that there was a need. At the time, we were thinking about 150 students were looking to come from the University of the Bahamas to Hampton University, and they needed to try to figure out how to make that happen.
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