January 2021 The trustees agreed to donate £600 to Five Talents for 4 mobile phones for training facilitators. Five Talents supports those living in extreme poverty to create their own opportunities to save, plan and build sustainable futures for themselves and their families. They have been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo training people in literacy, numeracy, financial and business skills and since the coronavirus pandemic started, they have found mobile phones are invaluable for arranging health awareness training, data collection and planning how to operate during the pandemic. Local connection through a trustee of Five Talents who lives in Carlisle. www.fivetalents.org.uk
Also, COAT donated £360 to Children of the Dump to provide a supply of rice for one month. Children of the Dump provides education and support to deprived children living in extreme poverty on and around the Payatas and San Isidro rubbish dumps in Manila in the Philippines. Local connection through a trustee from West Cumbria. www.childrenofthedump.org.uk
In addition, COAT donated £400 to Helping Hands for 40 uniforms to allow children to attend state schools in Cambodia. Helping Hands is a small, locally staffed education project based in the rural community of Prasat Char. For rural Cambodian families, cost of a uniform is a barrier to education, so uniform provision plays a fundamental role in improving school attendance. Local connection through a person from Ulverston. www.helpinghandcambodia.org
March 2021 We donated £1440 to Village Water of which £940 was for the repair of one village water pump in Zambia. This money covers creating a water committee made up of local men and women who get training in basic maintenance and hygiene. Pump functionality and water quality is checked for a mimimum of 5 years. The COAT trustees also agreed to donate £500 towards boots and jackets for the local team members out in the field. Changing weather patterns in Africa have meant heavy rainfall, flooding and problems with mud have hindered team members trying to reach rural communities. www.villagewater.org
May 2021 We donated £1000 to the AdAmi Project who support vulnerable expectant and young mothers in Sierra Leone to return to education or to take their first steps towards employment. This donation is towards back to school kits (uniforms, stationary and learning materials) and/or vocational training fees. Local link via a person living in Kendal. www.adamiproject.org
June 2021 The COAT trustees agreed to donate £500 to Concern Worldwide (a member of the Disasters Emergency Committee) towards Covid relief work in India, as the impact of coronavirus there is so huge at the moment. https://www.dec.org.uk/ https://www.concern.org.uk/
July 2021 We made 3 donations this month. The first of £249.59 was to Because All Children Matter towards building a fence to protect the water well at Scotty’s Rescue Centre. The centre provides support for women and children currently living on the streets in Nairobi, Kenya. Scotty’s Centre can become more sustainable by selling the water to the local community. Our donation was increased by a matched donation from Global Giving. Local link through a trustee who lives in Keswick. www.globalgiving.org/projects/help-us-to-build-a-fence-to-protect-our-water-well
Our second donation of £300 was to WESOFOD towards building and running a bakery at the Residential Rehabilitation Centre for children with disabilities in Kambia district, Sierra Leone. The aim is to provide food for the children at the centre and to sell baked goods to the community to help towards sustainability of the centre. Local link through a WESOFOD trustee who lives in Kendal. www.wesofod.com
Lastly, we gave £700 to the Tanzania Development Trust for the Shinyanga Pig Keeping Project (SHIPIP). This is an ongoing income generating project for women and grandparents caring for grandchildren in the Shinyanga Municipal area. Training and support are given to the project participants and there is a “pass-on-a-pig” system whereby a female piglet is given to a new participant by a previous beneficiary. Local link through a Tanzania Development Trust trustee who lives in Cumbria. https://tanzdevtrust.org/projects/pig-keeping-projects/
September 2021
£400 was given to Village Water towards their work bringing safe water to villages in Mozambique. This grant will help to construct a well at their main office site where they test water quality and deliver water to villages around. At the moment this is a water quality testing site without running water!!! Local link with a trustee who has family in Cumbria.https://villagewater.org/
The trustees also agreed a donation of £500 to Legs4Africa to provide prosthetic limbs to amputees in the Gambia where it is estimated that there are 4,500 people in need of a prosthetic limb. Local link through the Cumberland Infirmary. You can read more about the people being helped via this programme here www.legs4africa.org/legup
COAT also gave £500 to Tools For Self-Reliance towards the training of young people in vocational skills in northern Ghana. COVID 19 has led to increased unemployment, poverty and lack of food. Training young people will enable them to earn an income, feed themselves and their families, and reduce the number migrating to the cities to live a precarious and vulnerable life. There is a TFSR group collecting and refurbishing tools in Windermere. https://www.tfsr.org/
November 2021
No projects were supported this month as we felt none met COAT’s criteria.