CoaST is a tiny but vehement social enterprise working towards one planet tourism - ie a tourism providing benefits to the community, economy and environment of Cornwall and operating within our social, financial and environmental means. We are a Social Enterprise, and have a team of three full time and two part-time staff, plus our Board of Directors.
Jemma is our Senior Project Officer; Marja is our Network and Information Oracle; Jacqui is our Accreditation Advisor; John is our Finance Officer; and Manda is our Director....
We work out of a converted barn cupboard just outside Truro stuffed with leaflets, brochures, strategies, reports, bird boxes, jute bags, compost caddies, display boards, laundry cards, water hippos, real nappies and lots of simply terribly interesting "stuff" we have picked up on our travels and can't quite bear to recycle yet, so that if all five of us are in the office at once we have to ask permission to get up and walk anywhere. Fortunately we all get along really very well, even with Marja's remarkably unusual taste in sandwiches, and tend to make each other laugh a lot. Which can be no bad thing. Our foibles? Jemma can never remember the name of anyone she meets (so most people seem to get renamed Andrew, which can be a surprise if your real name is actually Jennifer); Jacqui is magnetically attuned to make any computer she is logged into run at the speed of a not-very-fast wind-up shoe box or - alternatively - they come alive after she has turned them off (and boy does it make her mad); Marja does unexpected things with sauerkraut and pickle (and gets confused about the difference between "work" and "home" - a very bad sign...); and Manda combines talking much too fast with trying to say far too many things at once (at which point everyone else nods and smiles kindly and just tries to shut out the noise). But blimey we work hard. A team made in heaven.
(and we've just made a joint team decision to Avoid People Landfill (Jacqui coined the phrase...). We've all registered at www.uktransplant.org . Waste Not Want Not.)
CoaST: an independent body and a social enterprise, based in a refurbished barn in Cornwall. Four women and one man, who variously encourage, inform, network, research, lobby, measure, persuade, object, question, bend ears, break boundaries and never knowingly give up.
