Chairperson’s Report

 Being involved with COAT continues to give me a great sense of satisfaction as I know that every penny we raise goes towards projects that improve life in some way for people living in poverty. We are a small charity but we believe we can make a real difference.

In 2018 £4500 was given to organisations to fund such diverse projects as building toilets for a school in Malawi and buying an oxygen concentrator for a Primary Health Centre in Nepal. All but one of these projects had a link to Cumbria with the one exception being funding towards the Rohingya Emergency Appeal in Bangladesh and this project has a special appeal for two of our Trustees, Sue and Hilary, who have both lived in Bangladesh.

We raised the money for these grants through our annual COAT quiz, Sue’s garden party, a ceilidh, two paper quizzes, and, for the first time, a stall at Keswick Victorian Christmas fair where we shivered in the cold and wet but enjoyed talking to people about COAT. This event was seen as an awareness raising event as well as a fundraiser and I think we introduced COAT to a number of people in the Keswick area.

In March we regretfully accepted Jos Curtis’ resignation as a Trustee. We are grateful to her for the time and effort she gave to COAT and we really miss her role as Minutes Secretary. We recognise that we need to attract one or two more people to join us as trustees.

In April we held an away day to discuss our future fundraising and ideas on how to fill the need for more trustees.  We had a really good discussion at Connie and Mike’s home and made lots of resolutions which we maybe need to revisit this year!!

We have registered with the University of Cumbria with the hope of attracting students to volunteer with us. Unfortunately this has so far only attracted one expression of interest which wasn’t followed up. But now that we are registered we will get an invitation to the student volunteering fair in September.

For such a small group of people we do incredibly well and our efforts are now being supplemented by support from the new South Lakes COAT support group. This group of former VSO supporters have donated £300 this last year and have decided to actively work to support COAT in the future.

So a small group of Trustees but with a large number of supporters to all of whom we are very grateful for turning up at our events, contributing to our 100 Club and for raising money in other ways. I am sure that 2019 will be just as successful for us.

Personally I would like to thank the trustees for their hard work to ensure our events are successful.

A vote of thanks from the Trustees was made to Hilary for all her work and leadership through the year and especially for travelling from Kendal for meetings.

Secretary’s Report

We gave 7 grants in 2018 (compared with 12 grants in 2017), all of which had Cumbrian connections. We maintained or renewed links with Tools for Self Reliance; Days for Girls; Burkina Faso; Concern; and Save the Needy Sierra Leone; and made a new link with Phase Worldwide. These projects mostly reflected our interests in health and education and training.

The number of applications we receive has remained much the same for some years and has picked up again following our change of name. Some applicants now write an initial enquiry asking if it is worth applying.

We need to continue to identify people and organisations in Cumbria who might benefit from a small COAT grant for their overseas project.

Much time has been spent dealing with the legal and financial arrangements for the legacy which COAT is going to manage for it’s recipient. Getting a “no objection” response from the Charity Commissioners took many months. Hopefully we will soon move to next stage which will involve planning for the actual dispersement of the funds.

A vote of thanks from the Trustees was made to Sue for her work as Secretary.