The CO Foundation was founded by Bart and Emmy van der Grinten in January of the year 2000 with the intention to initiate activitivities aimed at providing sustainable support to the underprivileged people in their direct environment. Over the years the CO Foundation established three main projects offering organisational, practical and financial support in the areas of health care, patient rehabilitation, poverty alleviation and youth development. Furthermore the CO Foundation acts as implementing partner for organisations both in Nigeria and abroad in two other projects.
All projects of the CO Foundation are based on three important principles: use intrinsic strengths of local people to initiate an activity, make sure the activity is in the long run self-sustainable and avoid overhead costs in the Netherlands thus assuring a 100% availability of raised funds in Nigeria. For more information on the different projects of the CO Foundation please visit the Projects section of this website.
Bart and Emmy have been living and working in Kaduna in the northern partof Nigeria since early 1999. Bart is working as Country Manager for IDA Foundation, an international non-profit wholesaler of essential drugs, supplying medicines to health care organisations in Nigeria with a special focus on HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis (TB).
At the start of their stay in Nigeria Emmy worked as a medical doctor in charge of the leprosy and TB control programme of Kaduna State. She handed over to a Nigerian doctor in August 2005 and is currently involved in providing technical assistance to the national TB control programme of the Federal Ministry of Health in Abuja. Together with their six children Bart and Emmy are still living in Kaduna and are running the CO Foundation on a purely charitable basis.
The CO Foundation is registered with the Chamber of Commerce in Venlo, the Netherlands. It is also registered as a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) with the Corporate Affairs Commission in Abuja, Nigeria. For details concerning the organisation of the CO Foundation, including members of the board and the constitution, please visit the Organisation section of this website.