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Community development for children's education

About COCO

Welcome to COCO! COCO is an international children’s charity based in Newcastle upon Tyne. COCO works with communities in remote regions overseas to alleviate the poverty preventing children’s education. COCO stands for Comrades of Children Overseas, a name taken from the famous Comrades Marathon in South Africa which both our Co-Founders (Steve Cram MBE and Jim Panton) ran back in 1999. They both realised the impact fundraising could have on the lives of people blighted by poverty and believed that education provided the answer to overcoming poverty. From here COCO was born.

At COCO we are passionate about working with communities in remote regions that often go unnoticed by others and where our assistance will make the biggest difference possible. We aim to understand the needs of each community we work with so that we can fund projects that benefit the whole community and allow them to find their own solutions to poverty. We empower people so that they can become financially independent and able to afford to send their children to school. Education is our primary goal but we realise this requires involvement from the whole community. Our projects change lives and more importantly, our projects are sustainable so that eventually our assistance will no longer be required.

Currently COCO works in East Africa and Ghana and, since it was founded in 2000, has raised over £2.8 million. Last year alone, COCO’s projects positively impacted on the lives of over 15,000 people.


Our Projects

Currently COCO is working with 10 project partners in Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa and Ghana with a hope to expand our work into Kenya and Rwanda when funding permits.

Find out more about the communities we work with by clicking here.

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