Chairperson’s Report

Firstly, I want to say how grateful we are to Maddy Prior for her continued support of COAT in her role as our Patron. We also thank Hunter Davies who has now stood down from his Patron role.

During the year there were changes to our Trustee Board. In January Roy Lowthian decided to step down and very sadly he died in November. Roy had been an active and committed supporter of international development for many decades and had served twice as a COAT Trustee.

We welcomed two new Trustees in September…Sally and Hannah… and we appreciate the skills and enthusiasm they bring. Our social media presence has benefitted hugely. And I am pleased to say that Linda, who has supported COAT with so much lockdown fundraising, is now joining us as Trustee.

In March we agreed a reshuffle of responsibilities within the Trustee Board and in July Hilary and I swapped roles so that Hilary took on Grants Secretary and I took over the Chair, while Claire took on additional Secretary roles. I’m sure we all want to thank Hilary formally for all she did while Chair of COAT. Her practical experience of projects at home and overseas continues to be invaluable.

Helen has continued as Treasurer and general source of advice on how things should be done. The Burkina Faso accounts, online payments and using PayPal, the 100 Club, constitutional change and Charity Commission requirements have all added to her load. She is a rock of COAT. Thank you Helen.

I have wondered how many years of Trusteeship Connie, Mike and Ian have between them. They bring COAT so much experience. But even more we appreciate their never ending enthusiasm, fun, new ideas, and in Ian’s case, ability to sell anything to anyone.

Particular thanks must go to Claire and her company Acorn who made COAT their charity of 2020 and were generous in their support.

It is beyond obvious that 2020 was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. This had, and continues to have, dreadful personal, community, international, and organisational consequences for all of us. Rather than dwell on these, I’d like us to remind ourselves of how quickly and effectively COAT adapted to the new situation, enabling us to make 13 grants about which Hilary will be saying more later. This was very satisfying when so many things around us ground to a halt. The impact of Covid on the countries with which we connect is yet to be fully felt and I suspect it will be felt particularly in health and education, the areas on which we concentrate, for many years to come.

Zoom, WhatsApp, virtual, online, PayPal became the ways in which we operated. We all quickly acquired language and skills we had never heard of before. Our last face to face meeting was in March and sitting close to each other round that little table in the university chapel seems hard to imagine now, but I’m looking forward to doing it again. Although, going to a computer rather than driving to Carlisle on a snowy night does have it’s advantages!

The last face to face fundraising event we were able to hold before lockdowns started was a very successful Quiz mastered by Keith Baty at Blindcrake Village Hall.  After this our fundraising efforts went online and it’s been a fabulous effort by everyone including our friends in the South Lakes COAT support group, and other COAT supporters…with a special mention to Kester Roberts! Helen will tell us more about the results but I think we should be really pleased with how we all brought our ideas and talents to bear…making, baking, growing, selling, crafting, knitting, quizzing, music making, eating, promoting, organising, and donating.  And please don’t forget what a good source of funds the 100 Club is….we all really need to recruit new members.

COAT Trustees continued to manage the legacy of Ms Falconer to Burkina Faso while Penny and Ian handled the communications and planning with the project. We will hear more from them about progress in the use of the funds shortly.

My feeling is that despite the horrible context, this has been a good year for COAT. I feel we have worked well together, adapted to circumstances, and personally I’ve had a lot of fun. The main thing is, that even with relatively small amounts of money, we know we have made a real contribution to improving some people’s lives.

Grant Secretary’s Report

I took over the role of Grant Secretary in the spring of 2020 from Sue Buckwell who has done an amazing job of receiving applications, communicating with organisations and presenting suitable applications to the Trustees for many years. It’s a hard act to follow.

I very quickly realised what a privilege it is to communicate with applicants and learn about some of the amazing work that is being carried out around the world by many, mostly small, organisations.

It has been a year like no other for everyone due to the pandemic and in many ways has been a difficult year for COAT. But despite all our physical fundraising activities having to be cancelled we have been able to make thirteen grants totalling £4840 to projects in nine different countries. These grants covered such diverse activities as buying a motorcycle, delivering prosthetic limbs, building toilets and, of course, providing food. Twelve of our thirteen grants were to organisations with a strong Cumbrian connection which is one of our main criteria.  Many of the grants were to organisations we have supported before – building a long term relationship with people working on the projects that we support gives us great accountability, good feedback and confidence in the recipients.

The role continues to be a learning exercise for me as I realise the importance of keeping in touch with the recipients of funds to ensure their projects are successful and to collect feedback to send to our supporters. It is unfortunate that we have felt it necessary this year to ask two organisations to return the money we had donated. Project Trust has had to cancel most of their volunteer placements and another organisation was unable to start their project.

We look forward to being able to make a small difference to the lives of people living in some of the poorest regions of the world during 2021.