FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AirAsia Cafe announce collaboration with the Silent Teddies Bakery to provide fresh, preservatives-free cookies onboard KUALA LUMPUR, 23 November 2012 – AirAsia announced an official collaboration with The Silent Teddies Bakery at The Community Service Centre for the Deaf here today, to provide fresh and preservatives-free cookies on board selected AirAsia flights starting this month. The collaboration is also a part of AirAsia’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, in supporting the Community Service Centre for the Deaf (CSCD) efforts to equip deaf youths with entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to be independent. AirAsia Berhad CEO, Aireen Omar said, “This collaboration does not only provide our guests with fresh and delicious cookies to enjoy on board, but also the chance for CSCD’s talented youths to develop and polish their entrepreneurial skills. “This initiative will also enable our guests to play a direct role in helping the young bakers to flourish and become self-sustainable by simply purchasing the cookies, as all proceeds go into supporting CSCD programmes and its school for deaf children. “We are proud to be in support of this fantastic effort by CSCD and we wish them all the best!” Aireen added. AirAsia is set to order 10,000 cookies monthly from The Silent Teddies Bakery to kick off the partnership. These will comprise the bakery’s top selling chocolate chip oatmeal, cashew nut butter and almond butter varieties. Bite-size and crisp, each piece is a perfect blend of flavourful ingredients infused with the subtle fragrance of butter. Packed by the baking apprentices in special AirAsia Café-Silent Teddies wrapping, each sachet will contain six pieces of assorted cookies. AirAsia Group Head of Inflight Food and Services, Shireen Chia said, “We were looking for a supplier for fresh and preservatives-free cookies when we came across the story of Silent Teddies. It gives us the perfect opportunity to provide fresh foods on board while lending much deserved support to a wonderful organisation.” Launched in September 2010, the Silent Teddies Bakery sits next to the CSCD School in a quiet side street in the shadow of KL’s famous St John’s Institution and St John’s Cathedral. The bakery produces 600 loaves of bread per month and 30kg of cookies daily. Baker Khew Yun Loi, who runs the The Silent Teddies Bakery, said via sign-language, “This is a small order for AirAsia but for us, it is an important step. With the success of this project, we can look at expanding the project and even in collaborating with other people-with-disabilities groups. It is the start of (more) big things (to come).” All products at the bakery are made fresh without use of preservatives which makes it important for the bakery to move its goodies fast - criteria that attracted the attention of AirAsia’s Inflight Services Department. Silent Teddies cookies are available on selected AirAsia flights from November 2012 onwards. For more information on the Community Service Centre for the Deaf (CSCD) and the Silent Teddies Bakery, visit www.sid.org.my. For more updates on AirAsia’s latest innovations, as well as promotions, activities and contests, connect with them via Twitter (twitter.com/AirAsia) or Facebook (facebook.com/AirAsia). Photo captions: Photo 1 - AirAsia Bhd CEO, Aireen Omar and AirAsia Group Head of Brand & Ancillary Income, Ishsal Ishak having a chat with Mr. Tan Yap, Founder of the Silent Teddies Bakery. Photo 2 - The AirAsia team and  Community Service Centre for the Deaf (CSCD) representatives with students of the centre. Photo 3 - AirAsia Bhd CEO Aireen Omar trying her hand at making cookies, assisted by a baker from the Silent Teddies Bakery. AirAsia orders 10,000 cookies monthly from The Silent Teddies Bakery to be sold onboard selected AirAsia flights Photo 4 - AirAsia Berhad CEO Aireen Omar (5th from left), Silent Teddies Bakery’s Founder, Mr. Tan Yap (6th from left) together with AirAsia and CSCD representatives with bakers from the Silent Teddies Bakery. AirAsia supports the Community Service Centre for the Deaf’s (CSCD) effort to equip deaf youths with entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to be independent. ***ENDS*** About the AirAsia Group AirAsia, the leading and largest low-cost carrier in Asia, services the most extensive network with 85 destinations. Within 10 years of operations, AirAsia has carried over 152 million guests and grown its fleet from just two aircraft to approximately 106. The airline today is proud to be a truly ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) airline with established operations based in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and the Philippines servicing a network stretching across all ASEAN countries, China, India, Sri Lanka and Australia. AirAsia was named the World’s Best Low Cost Airline in the annual World Airline Survey by Skytrax for four consecutive years in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.