COAT Making Strides to Get Legs to Africa in 2023
Acorn have supported the work of Cumbria Overseas Aid Trust (COAT) since 2017, both with financial contributions and offering our time and assistance for more practical activities, such as the necessary admin that comes with running a charity.
COAT – previously known as Carlisle Overseas Aid Trust – has been operating for over 30 years and uses all money donated towards helping others and has supported projects and communities in some of the poorest regions of the world.
Over recent years, this has included donations and support to:
- Concern Worldwide to help support relief work after the floods in Pakistan in 2022. https://www.concern.org.uk/
- A young person from west Cumbria doing voluntary teaching work in Senegal through Project Trust. https://projecttrust.org.uk/
- Children of the Dump to provide Saturday tutorial sessions for children living on and near rubbish dumps in Manila, the Philippines. https://childrenofthedump.org.uk/
- Rukungiri Orphan Partnership in southern Uganda which will provide benches with tables attached for the Rukungiri Modern Primary School. https://rop.uk.net
- Saltergate Children’s Home, Ethiopia for a poultry project. This will contribute to the lease of land, buying chickens and feed. Proceeds from the poultry project will go towards the food, clothing, accommodation.
- Bread Factory project in Yemen through Mercy Relief. The bakery will provide bread and jobs for local people. https://www.mercyrelief.org.uk/donations/bread-factory/
One initiative that COAT also supports is Legs4Africa (https://www.legs4africa.org/) who recycle prosthetic legs that would otherwise end up in landfill and facilitate support groups so amputees in sub-Saharan Africa can live more independent, fulfilled lives.
With the support from COAT, Legs4Africa has been able to put 25 individuals back on their feet. It costs Legs 4 Africa, on average, £20 to collect, maintain and ship each prosthetic leg and, since January 2023, they have collected 1,036 prosthetic legs from across the UK, the EU, USA and Canada.
All of these will be refurbished before being shipped to Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal and the Gambia and, in the first half of 2023 alone, Legs4Africa shipped a record-breaking 1,564 prosthetic feet to these six countries.
You can read the half year report from Matt Thompson at Legs4Africa here – it’s a really interesting read with some great stories about the people whose lives have been transformed by receiving a new prosthetic limb.