Registered Charity No. 1090901
Trustees’ Annual Report for the year ended 31 December 2025
The Kanji Project
34 Vicarage Drive, Eastbourne, BN20 8AP
Trustees' Annual Report Year ended 31 December 2025
Trustees’ Annual Report for the year ended 31 December 2025
Aims and Objectives
The Objects of the Charity, as defined in its constitution, are:
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the advancement of education in India
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the relief of those in need in India, by reason of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage.
The constitution permits the Charity trustees to meet these objects in such ways as they think fit, in particular, but not exclusively, by providing grants.
Partners
During 2025 The Kanji Project continued to work with two organisations in Tamil Nadu, India:
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St Antony’s Foundlings (SAF) is an Indian-registered charitable Society. The Society runs St Antony’s Matriculation School. It also assists local people in the community who are in need through a village outreach program, a tailoring training centre, a loan scheme for women entrepreneurs and disaster relief when needed. Its work is centred around the small rural town of Kanji in the Tiruvannamalai District of Tamil Nadu.
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The Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (FIHM) is a religious Congregation of women based in Pondicherry. The Congregation runs The Sunshine Special School from its centre near Pudupalayam, about 12 kilometres from Kanji.
Enfants de Kanji, a small French charity, also works with St Antony’s Foundlings and liaises with The Kanji Project, sharing knowledge and experience.
Public Benefit
The trustees of The Kanji Project are mindful of their responsibility to ensure that the Charity provides a public benefit. They communicate frequently with the key personnel in their Indian partner organisations and have dedicated liaison persons for each key partner, so that they can be confident that the work being funded is indeed providing such a benefit.
In 2025 the trustees have maintained regular contacts with our partners in India via online meetings, telephone and email correspondence.
Governance
The trustees have continued to meet regularly online via Microsoft Teams throughout 2025. In total, the trustees met online as a quorate group 8 times for a regular trustees’ meeting. Although TKP trustees have not visited Kanji in 2025, they have benefitted from information shared by partner organisation Enfants de Kanji, whose Chair visited both St. Anthony’s School and the
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Sunshine Day Centre. Trustees of TKP received an in-person visit from Lourdusamy Michael, the head of school at St. Anthony’s, providing a chance to discuss business as well as socialise.
This year, the trustees have attended to some back-office tasks such as organising online filing systems and updating our shared OneDrive. This has had a significant positive impact on the ease of administration and helps to secure clear accountability. In a similar vein, although not of our choosing, the trustees have had to make new arrangements to its financial reporting practices because of CAF Bank’s implementation of a new online infrastructure. Some issues remain unresolved and TKP is in ongoing communication with CAF Bank, also with regards to costs incurred by the charity because of the changes to CAF Bank’s reporting templates.
Fundraising wise, this year has seen the welcome repeat of events such as the Lenten Lunch and the Eastbourne Charity Quiz, both a testimony to the activities of loyal and dedicated supporters in our community for whom we are very grateful. Aware of the need to find new income streams, the trustees have this year began an exploration of the possibility of securing additional money from other trusts and funding bodies. Although not successful in this instance with the trust approached, this avenue of funding will remain on the agenda for the year ahead. 2025 also saw trustees out at local events in the Eastbourne area to raise awareness of TKPs work. The trustees also pass on their sincere gratitude to the charity’s President and Patron for their ongoing support in helping to raise the profile of the charity.
This year, in the projects, we have continued to see the delivery of high-quality services, with reported outcomes for the children and community members receiving support, meeting and reaching beyond expectations. A beautiful testimony to the impact of the charity’s work was displayed in the Autumn Newsletter where testimonies form a range of beneficiaries were recounted.
St. Anthony’s School had a successful end to the 2024/25 school year, seeing the first cohort of Plus One students sitting government exams with very agreeable results. The number of students enrolled in Plus One and Plus Two have exceeded expectations and the school this year had a total of 2,154 students on roll, the highest number ever. The outreach work has also seen some significant results with 200 children benefitting from support at the afterschool clubs and with women members of the loan scheme successfully setting up their own little enterprises with great impact on their families’ livelihood. The community work delivered by SAF celebrated another great success in taking 38 women through the 6 months tailoring course. The training provides a direct segway to employment for women, often young girls, with no formal education and limited means of supporting themselves and their families. 10 of the poorest women received a sewing machine on completion of the course.
The trustees also extend their admiration and gratitude for the way in which Lourdusamy Michael, head of school at St. Anthony’s, continues to be an active agent for change and support in the wider community, instilling in the pupils a sense of duty and responsibility to care for those less able to care for themselves, for example when disaster strikes, as was the case with cyclone Fengal this year.
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At the Sunshine Special School, 20 children continue ~~d~~ to be supported to grow and develop based on their individual abilities, providing relief and support to their families who are able to work and carry out their other responsibilities because of the relief of care provided by the centre. The trustees have this year begun negotiations with the Rose Sisters about the possible development of a new centre for the children as the current facilities are not fit for purpose longer term and poses accessibility issues for the children with limited mobility.
With regards to the distribution of funds, The Kanji Project remains committed to being led by its partners on the ground. Regular communication allows for swift decisions to be made and to ensure that funds are used where they are most needed. The trustee group continue to closely monitor the impact on the ground of the money we receive from donors.
This year again, we conducted the AGM as an online meeting. The annual meeting saw a live presentation from Lourdusamy Michael, the head of St. Anthony’s school.
Education and Relief of Need
There are three distinct strands to the educational work funded by The Kanji Project.
St Antony’s Matriculation School takes pupils, boys and girls, regardless of caste or religion, from the age of 3 through to 18. The school has high academic standards and its results in the external examinations for the 10[th] standard school year have consistently been among the best in the region. These results are complemented by the school’s achievements in sports and a range of extracurricular activities. The school involves itself in the community with ecological projects and health awareness programmes.
St Antony’s, which is run by St Antony's Foundlings, is a fee-paying school, with the fees set by the Tamil Nadu Education Department. It takes a proportion of children whose parents cannot afford to pay the full fees. Depending upon the family’s circumstances, there may be up to 100% remission of fees.
The Kanji Project provides grants to top up the fee income and so enable the subsidised places to be offered. Grants also help to finance some of the community involvement.
The Sunshine Special School takes up t ~~o~~ twenty children who have learning disabilities. Some of the children also have moderate to severe physical disabilities. The aim of the school is to enable each child to develop social, practical and academic skills to the extent to which he or she is able. The school is staffed by two teachers with Special Needs training, assisted by two ayahs with a particular interest in working with these children. There is close liaison between the staff and the children’s parents.
The children’s attendance records are excellent, and parents are pleased by the ways in which their children are benefiting from the school. There have been some significant improvements in children’s speech, physical agility and learning.
The Sunshine School is run by the Franciscan Sisters. No fees are charged by the school which is supported entirely by grants from The Kanji Project.
Village Outreach work is carried out in 5 rural villages surrounding Kanji. The work is led by SAF and has an employed outreach worker plus several peripatetic homework club teachers. Support
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offered in the villages include homework support for children attending either local government schools or St. Anthony’s School, Children’s Parliament sessions, health promotion activities and an income generating cooperative and loan scheme for women. This work is receiving significant interest in the villages and has great potential for scaling to include more villages in the locality.
Children’s Parliaments bring together boys and girls from different castes and religions to work together for the benefit of their communities. The parliaments are well-structured arrangements, with individuals taking responsibilities for particular roles e.g. chair, secretary, and subjects e.g. education, environment and so on. The parliaments are held in 'neutral' places such as schools, to ensure that children from differing castes or religions feel welcome. The Children’s Parliaments are effective in disseminating information, such as the prevention of diseases like Dengue Fever, and in lobbying village elders for small but significant improvements such as the repair of street lighting and the cleaning up of public wells. Through the work of the Children's Parliaments, young people are growing up with a greater sense of social responsibility and regard for the common good of their communities.
The women’s income generation scheme runs as self-help groups. These groups, each with up to 15 women, meet monthly to discuss progress and future plans. Monthly subscriptions enable them to provide loans to members in urgent need, while they also access government loans to support various family needs such as education, healthcare, and livelihood development. With the cooperative support women are assisted in buying livestock and setting up market stalls to improve their household incomes.
Financial support from The Kanji Project to relieve need, focuses mainly on long-term benefits rather than short-term handouts. However, the locality is vulnerable to the immediate impacts of natural disasters, weather conditions (droughts, floods), and downturns in the wider economy, and SAF therefore holds a small fund, provided by The Kanji Project, from which it can give emergency grants to families and individuals, most often in the case of a medical crisis. It is only these people who receive assistance in cash.
Safeguarding
Following release of the Charity Commission’s Inquiry Report, The Gail Trust (March 2018), which emphasised the safeguarding responsibilities of UK charities who do not do direct delivery abroad but whose overseas partners have contact with potentially vulnerable individuals and groups, the Kanji Project’s Board of Trustees, in conjunction with staff at St Antony’s Foundlings, has undertaken a thorough review of our safeguarding policy and procedures. Processes for ensuring due diligence within our partner organisations have been added to our processes and a system which will alert us to potential safeguarding issues within the projects has been put in place. No incidents requiring involvement of The Kanji Project have been noted by partners during 2025.
Data protection and GDPR
Leading up to the introduction of new regulations in May 2018, the Trustees undertook a data flow analysis and updated privacy statements and consent forms to be GDPR compliant. The legal basis underpinning The Kanji Project’s data processes are Consent and Legitimate Interest. There have
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been no recorded breaches during 2025, and the Trustees continue to review the data that we hold on supporters to ensure that it complies with legislation.
Publicity and Liaison with Supporters
The Kanji Project sends out 2 yearly, newsletters and also extensively use the news tab on our websit ~~e~~ to communicate with supporters about current issues affecting our projects and the local area in which they are situated. We use Mailchimp to share regular news updates with people on our database and to launch new fundraising initiatives.
Financial Review
We finish the 2025 financial year with a healthy balance of £14,192 in our general account. As well as our regular payments to St. Antony’s School we were able to send an extra payment of £2,000 to fund chairs and benches for their new +1 and +2 classrooms (sixth form to us) by taking some money from our CAF Gold account. We were also able to send an extra £500 at the end of the year to support general expenses.
We have also made a small increase in funding to the Sunshine School to take account of inflation. Quarterly payments increased from £1,400 to £1,500 from May onwards. During the year we have been in discussion with the Rose Sisters about their plans to build a new centre for the school. This would represent a very positive development. However, substantial additional funding will be required. This will be a key focus for 2026.
We bank with the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). In June they up-graded their systems and their new data transfer format was no longer compatible with our database. We incurred some significant costs to have the database modified so that we could continue to use it to keep our financial records up-to-date.
This year the level of regular donations from supporters has held up well. On the other hand, the level of one-off donations was lower than in 2024. This can partly be accounted for by the fact that we did not arrange a large event like the 2024 Walk-to-India.
Fund-raising activities continue to make a good contribution to our income. We were delighted to be invited to be the beneficiary of one of the monthly Eastbourne Quiz Nights which raised £710. We are indebted to one of our long-standing supporters for organising Lenten and Harvest lunches which together raised £1070. We have now started to make use of the Small Donations Gift Aid Scheme which covers small individual cash donations valued at £30 or less. Our first claim using this scheme will be sent off early in 2026. Trustees have also run a series of table sales at local indoor markets, selling Indian Goods and Christmas cards. These raised about £350 in all.
We finished the year with a surplus of £726 which however does not reflect the transfer of £2000 form the CAF Gold account, meaning that total assets by the end of 2025 were £997 less than at previous year end.
Reserves Policy
The reserves policy is up-to-date.
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Risk
The trustees are aware of the risks associated with aid to overseas countries: exchange rate fluctuations, cultural differences, creation of dependency and so on. These are taken into account when making grant decisions. They discuss with the trustees of St Antony’s Foundlings and with the Franciscan Sisters the impacts, positive and negative, that different forms of aid may make upon the Indian village communities. They also periodically review risks more generally.
Structure, governance and management
The Kanji Project is an unincorporated association registered by the Charity Commission on 4th March 2002 and governed by a constitution (last updated 25 April 2015). It is managed by trustees.
Trustees
Trustees are elected by members at the Annual General Meeting. They may also be co-opted until the next Annual General Meeting by the existing trustees. Trustees are themselves members of the charity.
When seeking to recruit new trustees, the existing trustees are mindful of the skills, knowledge and experience needed by the Board of Trustees. We continue to review the trustee board’s need for new membership.
Prior to appointment, potential trustees are interviewed, two references are obtained, and, if successful, the new trustee is required to sign a declaration confirming their eligibility to serve. New trustees are provided with information giving them an overview of the charity’s operations, but much of the trustee induction is done informally with further information being supplied as needed in trustee meetings and in other communications.
Trustees meet about every six weeks. They do not receive remuneration for their work with the charity, but expenses incurred solely for charity business are reimbursed on request.
Trustees who served in 2025 were
Jennifer Cruse re-elected 29/06/2024 Veronica Clark re-elected 17/06/2023 George Foden re-elected 07/06/2025 Sofie Franzen (Chair) re-elected 29/06/2024
Alison Worgan re-elected 07/06/2025 Peter Dacombe re-elected 02/07/2022 Benjamin Skinner elected 17/06/2023 Lesley Arend elected 29/06/2024
Patron and President
Lady Cotton is a Patron of The Kanji Project. Mr Ian Parr is the President of the Charity.
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Volunteers
The Kanji Project is run entirely by volunteers: the trustees plus the many other people who give of their time and their skills to the Charity. It is thanks to all these people that the Charity can commit such a large proportion of its income to its charitable purposes.
Serious Incidents
The trustees are legally obliged to report to The Charity Commission any serious incident (e.g. fraud) adversely affecting the charity. No such serious incident has occurred during 2025.
Bankers
CAF Bank Ltd 25 Kings Hill Avenue Kings Hill West Malling Kent ME19 4JQ
Honorary Legal Adviser Elizabeth Jones
Approved by the trustees on and signed on 24[th] March 2026 on their behalf by
Sofie K Franzen
Chair of Trustees Signature
Date 24/03/26
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Independent Examiner’s Report to the Trustees of The Kanji Project Trust
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Trustees' Annual Report Year ended 31 December 2025
Financial Statement for the year ended 31 December 2025
CAF Cash General Account
| CAF Cash General Account | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | |
| RECEIPTS | ||
| Regular donations | 20,891 | 20,533 |
| One-off donations | 1,952 | 3,667 |
| Fund-raising events | 2,097 | 2,311 |
| Gift Aid payments from HMRC | 4,728 | 5,094 |
| Bank interest | 25 | 29 |
| Transfer from Gold Account (1) | 2,000 | |
| TOTAL | 31,693 | 31,634 |
| PAYMENTS | ||
| Grants to St. Antony's Foundlings | ||
| - School + Shanthi Lumin grants (2) | 14,350 | 13,165 |
| - Village outreach work | 3,250 | 3,000 |
| - Salaries and allowances | 6,000 | 8,300 |
| Grants to IDHAYA - the Sunshine School | 5,900 | 5,600 |
| Bank charges | 261 | 291 |
| Printing - newsletters, cards, flyers | 342 | 338 |
| Postage | 136 | 145 |
| Website hosting and helpdesk | 173 | 176 |
| Purchase of Indian artefacts | 62 | 0 |
| Trustee expenses | 70 | 0 |
| Database maintenance costs (3) | 423 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 30,967 | 31,015 |
| Excess of receipts over payments (1) | 726 | 619 |
| CAF Gold Reserve Account | ||
| Receipts- Interest | 278 | 476 |
| Payments- Transfer to General Account | 2,000 | 0 |
| Balance Sheet - Assets | ||
| CAF Cash General Account | 14,192 | 13,467 |
| CAF Gold Reserve Account | 13,994 | 15,716 |
| TOTAL | 28,186 | 29,183 |
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Notes
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The General Account shows a surplus of £726 for the year. However, this does not fully reflect the transfer of £2,000 from the reserves account early in the year. This was used to provide additional funding to St. Antony's School. Overall, our total assets are £997 lower than at the start of 2025
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Shanthi Lumin closed in early 2025 and therefore all grant money this year went to St. Antony's school.
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We had some unexpected costs for maintenance and upgrading our database.
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