London-based distributor Media I.M. has signed on to represent animated children’s series Flying Animals and its preschool spin-off Kids and Flying Animals from St. Petersburg, Russia-based animation studio DA.

Media I.M. has also partnered with UK-based charity Hope For Children and will transfer its distribution profits from Flying Animals to the charity’s Your Business, Their Lives initiative, which is set to launch later this summer.

Flying Animals, as it turns out, comes from a uniquely charitable place. The concept for the show stemmed from DA’s animation-therapy programs that teach children suffering from cancer how to create cartoons. The series currently airs on seven channels in Russia, including leading children’s channels Carousel and Mult and is accessible online.

To date, 26 episodes of Flying Animals and Kids and Flying Animals have been produced and a 26 x six-minute second season is now in production with nine eps set for completion by the end of this year.

Russian charitable foundation AdVita holds the rights to Flying Animals and its goal was to create and deliver a kids series that could help support its work in aiding the families of children with cancer and other serious illnesses.

The Flying Animals deal comes on the heels of two new global rights agreements for Media I.M. with European studios Bionaut (Czech Republic) and Ficción Producciones (Spain).