Partner
Ecom Agroindustrial Corp. Ltd
Ecom Agroindustrial Corp. Ltd is a global commodity trading and processing company predominantly specializing in coffee, cocoa and cotton in major producing and consuming countries. We work with the Costa Foundation in Vietnam, Nicaragua and Peru. Ecom started its first sustainable community projects in Mexico and Central America, to support farmers, in 1999, working together with demanding clients and respected NGOs. In the 15 years since those initial efforts, Ecom export companies around the world have developed considerable in-house capabilities to train and support farmers and to help improve the economic, social, environmental and health conditions of coffee growers and their families. It is with great pride that Ecom has partnered with the Costa Foundation to build the Dar Sar Kindergarten in the Lac Duong District of Vietnam.
Partner
Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia
In 1927 the Colombian coffee growers organized themselves to create an institution that would represent them both nationally and internationally, defend their rights and seek ways to improve their quality of life. The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) is a non-profit and politically independent organization. As the foremost coffee association in Colombia, FNC is present in every rural region where coffee is grown. Its work revolves around the coffee growers and their families ensuring Colombian Coffee is grown in a sustainable manner, strengthening common interests within coffee-growing communities while positioning Colombian Coffee as the best coffee in the world. FNC and COSTA Foundation promote quality education in the Colombian rural areas to improve welfare and peace conditions for the farmer families, in collaboration with local authorities and communities.
Partner
Imagine 1 Day
Founded in 2007 by Chip and Shannon Wilson, Imagine1day is a Canadian based charity that works only in Ethiopia and specifically on education projects. With a team of 33 staff members in Ethiopia; we are a goal oriented organisation genuinely committed to leaving a legacy at every level. In ten years we have built 283 classrooms in 47 new schools all in rural and isolated communities. In addition to constructing new schools in 4 districts we have also worked closely with 487 schools across 10 districts transforming lives through education and leadership. We have a distinctive approach to our work with leadership development as a key pillar to all that we do. We partner with rural communities in Ethiopia to provide in-depth teacher training and capacity building and goal setting providing resources and income-generating grants and providing new schools; built from the ground up. We spend a minimum of three years on a project and schools only graduate when we are sure the impacts of our efforts are sustainable.
Partner
PEAS
PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools) is a UK-based charity and we work with the Costa Foundation in Uganda. We use an innovative SmartAid model to develop and run sustainable secondary schools that permanently widen access to education in Uganda and Zambia. Three in four children in Uganda, and two in three children in Zambia are unable to get a secondary education, largely due to a severe lack of places in affordable, quality secondary schools. PEAS uses a SmartAid approach to create financially sustainable secondary schools. Our schools generate enough internal revenue (through government subsidy, low fees and income generating projects) to run indefinitely and independently of UK fundraising. PEAS only build schools in areas where the need is greatest, and where children would otherwise be unable to receive a secondary education. We are 72% of the cost of so called free government schools. Our hope is that one day every child in Africa will benefit from a quality secondary education.
Partner
Plan
Plan is an international NGO with a presence in more than 70 countries, and we work with the Costa Foundation in Honduras. Our aim is to help children in the world’s poorest communities to build a better future by:
– Giving children a healthy start in life, including access to safe drinking water
– Securing the education of girls and boys
– Working with communities to prepare for and survive disasters
– Inspiring children to take a lead in decisions that affect their lives
– Enabling families to earn a living and plan for their children’s future
Our child-centred, community-level, relationships help children build a better future for themselves.
Partner
Seeds for Progress
The Seeds for Progress Foundation is a non-profit organization that improves access to high-quality education, a basic human right and contributes to social development and sustainable economic growth by creating opportunities to advance the quality of life for students, teachers and their families in the rural communities of Nicaragua and Guatemala coffee-growing regions. We promote strategic alliances at the local and international levels among educational stakeholders and with multiple actors along the coffee chain. The Foundation has been able to create opportunities for advancement for more than 6,000 students and 340 teachers.
Our programs foster innovation, empowerment, and education for students and teachers. We support these initiatives with access to technology, improvement of infrastructure, and a network of mentors that guarantee the successful implementation of the strategies and initiatives. We hold ourselves to high standards through a monitoring and evaluation system that improves our outcomes and measures results. These efforts contribute to the stability in their educational journey and help them achieve a lifetime of progress.
Partner
Volcafe
Our CSR policy is central to the culture of Volcafe because we support the objectives and spirit of accountable professional practices, which also make good business sense.
Since 2011, our partnership with Costa Foundation has greatly contributed to a closer collaboration with our coffee farmers and local communities in Peru, Vietnam and Colombia. Together, we have created access to education which has positively influenced the life of children today, and for many generations to come.
The partnership with Costa Foundation goes hand in hand with Volcafe’s activities in promoting sustainable coffee production. We are part of supply chains which are registered and approved by all the major certification and verification bodies, including Rainforest Alliance.
Trustee
Amit Aggarwal
Amit qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC in 2000, before joining the Australian Government’s International Trade Agency in London. He volunteered for the No Smoking Day charity before being recruited to the position of interim Chief Executive, tasked with securing the future of the annual Department of Health-sponsored campaign. He subsequently became the Head of Corporate Partnerships at the British Heart Foundation, and in 2015 was headhunted for the role of Director of Corporate Partnerships at Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. In 2020 Amit was asked to be the interim Director of Fundraising for NHS Charities Together’s Urgent National Covid Appeal which raised £150m. Amit was previously a Trustee of the UK Friends of the Abraham Initiatives
Trustee
Charlotte Baldwin
Charlotte is Costa Coffee’s Global Chief Digital and Information Officer, leading the company’s technology delivery and driving the digital transformation agenda, as a member of Costa’s Global Exec. An experienced digital leader, with roles spanning over 22 years across multiple industries, her career has focused on delivering digital transformation and complex technology-enabled business change.
She has driven business value through digitally enabled business models, complex integration and merger experience. Scope of roles have included Client/Customer facing digital product teams as well as delivering enterprise technology and all aspects of infrastructure across global organisations.
Being able to contribute to and be part of an organisation that really changes lives in the communities within which it operates and partners, was too good an opportunity to miss. I am passionate about the role and impact that education can have on people’s lives, and in particular, the importance that this has in helping advance more women into jobs and being able to influence and improve outcomes for them. The number of people positively impacted by the work of the foundation is truly inspiring!
Outside of work, Charlotte is kept busy with her 3 young children; she is passionate about supporting women in Tech and actively participates in mentoring and network initiatives. She also loves her Peloton bike, when she can find the time to go for a spin!
Team
Piers Blake
As man and boy, Piers had a 22 year career with Whitbread PLC with roles in sales, sales management, customer service and marketing. A personal experience in 2005 saw him change his career direction so that it now has a keen focus on helping disadvantaged children. Piers is a self-employed CSR and Community Investment consultant specialising in helping organisations and brands to create community and charity programmes that are fit for purpose and truly add value to as many beneficiaries as possible. He is also the Founder and Director of the Costa Foundation overseeing all of the project management from the UK with school projects now reaching coffee-growing communities in ten countries in three continents around the world. It’s the scale and reach of the charity that really impresses me; to have helped over 90,000 marginalised and disadvantaged children is hugely rewarding and seeing the love and passion that Costa team members have for this cause is such a positive thing to witness”
Volunteer
Rory Blyth
Rory Blyth is a Chartered Accountant who has worked at PwC, Tesco and Whitbread. He is currently the Director of Finance and Business Services at a Department for Education organisation responsible for skills in Engineering Construction. He helps the Foundation with Monitoring and Evaluation of our projects. “I volunteer because the Foundation and its team change thousands of young lives a year and I continue to be inspired by their efforts to put every pound raised directly back into schools and projects.
Trustee
Laura Camfield
Laura works as a Professor of Development Research and Evaluation in the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and is currently Head of the School. She has two daughters, aged 4 and 10, and consequently doesn’t have time for much else! Before she came to UEA she worked with Young Lives (Oxford University), a study of children’s lives over time, and the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research group (Bath University), and has a keen interest in education and social mobility. Her research interests centre around methodologies for doing good, ethical research and generating data for evaluation. Laura became a Costa Foundation Trustee in 2019 as she wanted to do something relating to education where you could see an immediate difference.
Trustee
Phil Cumming
Phil is a sustainable business professional with 25 years multi-sector experience. He is globally responsible for Costa’s sustainability strategy: Coffee with Commitment. Prior to joining Costa, he
developed and managed the delivery of world-class sustainability programmes for some of the world’s best-known organisations including Walgreens Boots Alliance, Marks & Spencer plc,
Kingfisher plc and the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.
Acting in a non-executive capacity, Phil has held a number of Trustee/Non-Exec roles. Phil became a Costa Foundation Trustee in June 2023 and as part of a trip to Uganda that summer saw first-hand the amazing impact the Foundation is having in coffee growing communities.
Phil is also an active member of the B Corp community and trained as a B Leader supporting businesses through B Corp certification. He sits on B Lab's Standards Advisory Council Multinational Subcommittee responsible for overseeing applications in multinational organisations.
Team
John English
John joined Whitbread in early 2014, to take on a new role as Head of Charity Partnerships, for Premier Inn and Restaurants, managing our hugely successful national charity partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital. John has previously spent most of his career in retail operations working in the discount sector, ASDA, shopping centres and as Head of Retail at Stansted Airport, developing the retail and eating offers across the airport. He first started working in the charity sector as Head of Regional Fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support, where his key focus was to develop new income streams and build relationships with local communities, service providers and corporate organisations. In October 2018, John joined Costa as Charity and Community Manager, he is responsible for building on the great achievements of the Costa Foundation.
Trustee and Chairman
Russell Fairhurst
Russell is General Counsel for Costa Coffee Ltd and has been a commercial solicitor for over 30 years having qualified with Slaughter and May. Russell helped Costa in the initial stages of setting up The Costa Foundation in 2007 and was a founding Trustee when the Foundation became an independent charity in 2012. Russell believes that education is a vital element in relieving poverty in the developing world. He chairs the Costa Foundation’s Main Board which is responsible for the governance, strategic and financial aspects of the charity. He also chairs the Foundation’s Project’s Committee which decides which school projects the Foundation will fund, which implementation partners the Foundation works with and reviews the success of projects once they are finished.
Trustee
Hayley Finn
Hayley Finn is the Global People Partnering Director at Costa Coffee. Hayley has previously worked in Finance and Audit roles at PwC (including charity and education sector clients), Tesco and
Whitbread. Since joining Costa Coffee in 2016, Hayley has worked in various roles including Financial Reporting & Control, Finance Business Partnering and Reward. Hayley is keen to help inspire Costa’s customers and team members to get involved with the Foundation and maximise the impact it can have on changing children’s lives and supporting coffee growing communities.
Trustee
Gordan Mowat
Gordon is the Managing Director of Costa Coffee in Europe, Middle East and North Africa. Gordon has previously worked across a number of businesses including Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Co., WM Morrisons and M&S. He joined Costa in November 2019 and became a trustee of The Costa Foundation in 2021. Having worked as a teacher, he understands the benefits of education and in giving back to those, who have less opportunities than we do. “What I love about the Costa Foundation is that there is a clear, tangible and unarguable link between the donations and thousands of children in coffee growing areas being educated and having opportunities. The Costa Foundation is making a real difference every day. It is incredible”
Volunteer
Emily Wilson
Emily is an Internal Controls Senior Manager at Costa Coffee. Having joined Whitbread (Costa’s previous owner) in 2014, Emily has seen how the Foundation has grown over the years and opened
up opportunities to thousands of children. Emily is a Chartered Management Accountant and volunteers to help with the Foundation’s finance. Throughout her time working with Costa, Emily
has been in numerous Finance roles across Whitbread, Coca-Cola and Costa Global. “I’m so happy to have the opportunity to help at the Foundation. What amazes me about the work the Foundation does is not only the life changing impact on the children, but the ripple effect of that education on their wider communities and future generations – truly powerful change”
I want to say a big thank you to Costa for building me this beautiful school with so many things to learn and play with!