Member Article

COCO and Newcastle University Business School team up to achieve #BalanceForBetter

International children’s charity COCO (Comrades of Children Overseas) and Newcastle University Business School recently teamed up to mark International Women’s Day and promote the #BalanceforBetter message. The two organisations brought together inspirational women from across the North East to celebrate their success and to look at how to achieve greater gender equality for women and girls, both here in the UK and overseas.

Invited guests heard from esteemed communications specialist Susan Wear, and Louisa Rogers, founder and CEO of online marketplace TrendListr. Susan began her career as journalist and has gone on to have a hugely successful career in communications. She is particularly known for her key roles in the development of city brands and stakeholder engagement with major companies. She was most recently director of corporate affairs at the Port of Tyne and is now an independent consultant still focussing on areas that support the economic growth of the North East region. Meanwhile, Newcastle University Arts, Business and Creativity alumnus Louisa has seen TrendListr, a curated online marketplace for vintage and pre-loved clothing, go from strength to strength since its launch in 2017. The business was recently listed in the Chronicle’s 19 to watch in 2019 list.

Joining Susan and Louise was COCO’s East Africa director, Oswin Mahundi. Oswin grew up in an impoverished area of southern Tanzania where he struggled to access education. Undeterred, Oswin worked hard to gain education to improve his and his family’s circumstances. He founded The Hoja Project in 2004, which is now COCO’s main project implementation partner in Tanzania. The Hoja Secondary School was then developed, the graduates from which have achieved the highest results of 192 schools in the region for the past six years. Oswin shared stories of the many inspirational women and girls who he has worked with in Africa.

The occasion coincided with International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

Lucy Kendall, CEO of COCO, comments: “We were delighted to team up with Newcastle University Business School for the second time to mark International Women’s Day. It is always a fantastic celebration of successful women in the world of work here in North East and overseas, particularly in East Africa where much of COCO’s work is focused.

“We were delighted to have Susan and Louisa on board to share their own inspirational stories of success and Oswin gave a brilliant insight into some of the challenges that women and girls have overcome in East Africa, partly with support from him and the COCO team.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chris Lines .