January 2024:

The trustees agreed to donate £663.35 to provide a water tank tower for student and staff toilets at the Umoja centre near Arusha, Tanzania. Umoja offers essential services, educational opportunities, and a safe space for vulnerable Tanzanian youths with the aim of building greater self-confidence, nurturing skills and talents and empowering the participants to gain control over their lives. Local link through a COAT south Lakes member. https://www.umojatanzania.org/ supported by https://umoja.co.uk/

March 2024:

COAT donated to 2 projects in March. We gave £500 to Light Education Development (LED) to provide 20 solar lights for communities living in the remote mountain area beyond Pomabamba in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru. A local team is trained to check batteries and manage malfunctions in the lights. Local link as the founder of LED lives in Cumbria. https://lighteducationdevelopment.org/

We also donated £300 to the Martin Academy in Malawi towards building a new block for years 7 and 8 at the school (the primary school will then have classrooms for all year groups). Local link through a COAT trustee. https://www.terrymartin.org/

May 2024:

The trustees agreed a donation of £600 to fund 3 computers and transport costs for the Kochogo Vocational Training Centre for use by students of ICT courses and other courses (all students are taught basic computing knowledge). Local link through a COAT supporter who used to work in Kenya https://www.kwetuleo.com/kochogo-vocational-training-centre/#

July 2024:

At this meeting we decided to donate £320 to Girl Guiding Cumbria towards a group visit to India involving some voluntary work . This donation reflects COAT’s aims of supporting local young people to learn about development issues. https://www.girlguidingnwe.org.uk/

The trustees also donated £450 to Five Talents to provide 3 mobile phones to support the communication, monitoring, evaluation and learning processes of their Literacy and Savings Group projects in the Aru region of the DRC. There has been a local link through a Five Talents trustee. https://www.fivetalents.org.uk/

September 2024:

The COAT trustees agreed to donate £700 to STAND (formerly Legs 4 Africa). STAND works with 8 clinics in Sub-Saharan Africa to re-use prosthetic limbs that would otherwise go to landfill. The Cumberland Infirmary regularly sends previously-used prosthetic limbs to STAND, and our donation will help towards transportation costs. Local link. https://stand.ngo/