Crew Welfare Initiative FAQ
This FAQ will answer the most common questions about the Crew Welfare Initiative, its mission, vision, partners and the policies that it develops and promotes.

What is the CWI (Crew Welfare Initiative) all about?
The Crew Welfare Initiative (CWI) is a global non-profit organisation dedicated to improve the quality of life of seafarers due to communication infrastructure within the global maritime community. This international campaign aims to bring the Internet age and low cost communication services and applications to seagoing vessels and their crews.

Simply put, CWI believes seafarers should be able to keep in touch with family, friends and their community whilst travelling the world's oceans or international shores. CWI also assist vessel owners to extend comprehensive communications capability to their crew as part of their crew welfare contribution and thus corporate social responsibility. The CWI aims to connect the world's 1.6 million sailors, their vessels, officers and crew members to the rest of the world in real time. CWI aims to bring the Internet age and low cost communication to the maritime community through a combination of leading technologies in port, near shore and at sea using satellite, cellular and wireless network technology, supported by industry partners, Governments, organisations, unions and associations and the global maritime logistics partners.

Why is the CWI needed?
Even in the 21st century the majority of the world?s seafarers can't communicate and use the Internet. Communication is made impossible both at sea and ports and terminals due to technical and economic reasons. The low cost connectivity everybody takes for granted is an expensive luxury for the world's seafarers.

The CWI has been formed to address these challenges by collating and introducing technologies and services from some of the world's leading technology companies such as Intel, Google and the umc.global network, among others.

By working with the shipping companies, owners, manager as well as crewing agent companies, CWI aims to bring services such as simple voice telephony, video telephony, email, instant messaging , communities, payment platforms, telemedicine services and many others to seafarers around the world.

Why does the CWI focus on communication infrastructure first?
Whilst it is accepted there are many aspects of crew welfare that require attention like payment and money transfer, eHealth services to improve mental and physical health, the CWI has been established to address a key aspect of the social wellbeing of crew members first: Private Communication. Based on a robust, reliable and affordable communication infrastructure, other wellbeing services become possible for the first time to seagoing vessels. A crew member can be out of touch with their family members for many months. This has an adverse affect on crew morale resulting in a high turnover of staff whilst also deterring new staff from joining the industry.

Freedom of communication is a human right everyone should enjoy, particularly seafarers who take the responsibility of providing us with the goods we consume everyday. Breaking down the technical and economic barriers to bring affordable communications is a complex task. The CWI facilitates the understanding of communications related issues in the maritime industry and seeks to provide a comprehensive solution to address them in a constructive and cost effective manner.

Where is the CWI?
Led by the Global Institute of Logistics, the CWI is a global initiative with international partner involvement from around the world. The Global Institute of Logistics manages the communications of the initiative.

Who funds the CWI?
The CWI is funded by its supporting and industry partner organisations. The initiative is intended to run on a not-for-profit basis and gathers its resources from partner members to develop, promote, deploy and support the various programmes and objectives of the initiative.

Who is involved in the CWI?
A number of different organisations participate in the CWI. These members are divided into industry partners and supporting partners.

Industry partner organisations are involved in the development and management of the CWI and include founding members such as The Global Institute of Logistics, umc.global network, Google, Intel, Duckdalben International Seaman's Mission and the Hamburg Port Authority.

Supporting Partners are either Unions, Associations, Government organisations and vessel owners who wish to provide affordable state of the art communication services as part of their crew welfare and corporate social responsibility programs. However it also includes remote site workers (off-shore companies) and organisations that wish to provide communications to their workers in non-cellular coverage areas.