The second virtual AGM of Cotlands took place on September 7.
Dr Monica Stach, CEO of Cotlands, welcomed all stakeholders and Cotlands employees and called on Cotlands chairperson Niven Postma to officially open the 77th AGM and adopt the minutes from last year’s meeting.
In the financial year under review, Cotlands encountered many challenges due to the pandemic and the organisation had to rethink and reorganise itself to not only survive but continue to solve the problem of lack of universal access to early learning for young, vulnerable children in South Africa.
A key highlight for Cotlands in the 2020/2021 financial year was the launch of CotlandIgnite™, an online training platform that offers two accredited courses, namely the occupational certificate early childhood practitioner course and the SETA new venture creation: toy library skills development course.
These two courses boast a total of 33 and 32 learners respectively embarking on an enriching and rewarding e-learning journey. Cotlands is excited to be offering SA corporates training solutions for their CSI programmes that improve the quality of education in marginalised communities, which can earn them points for skills development on their B-BBEE scorecards.
This major step forward for Cotlands in the online training space is the key to providing universal access to early learning and it will help address the shortage of skilled practitioners in the ECD sector.
Cotlands has played an instrumental role in impacting the lives of vulnerable children that can be quantified as follows:
• Cotlands has empowered, engaged and supported 9 383 children to play through our direct service delivery (toy libraries and early learning playgroups), as well as through our partnered projects and capacity-building programmes.
• Cotlands provided 40 054 meals through a variety of early learning playgroup programmes.
• Cotlands lent out 5 698 educational toys through our toy library programmes to children with no access to any learning resources. Cotlands owns and operates nine toy library programmes across the country.
• Cotlands board and leadership team remain committed to good governance, sound accounting principles and ethical conduct.
Niven Postma, Motseki Majake, Nazir Alli, Tatiana Page, Marcelle Arnold, Marie-Louise Samuels were re-elected to the board of directors.
Cotlands bids farewell to longstanding board member Janet du Preez. They would like to thank Janet for her dedication, length of service and volunteering her expertise to Cotlands over the many years.
Maxine Merrifield, Nicole da Silva, Theodore de Jager and Yule Banda were elected as new members of the board of directors for the ensuing years.
The audited 2021 annual financial statements were adopted and the meeting re-elected LSG Integrated as auditors for the next financial period until the next AGM in 2022.
