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BOAT – Blackfriars Overseas Aid Trust

Who We Are

Welcome to BOAT! Our charity (no. 288585) was founded in 1984 by a group from the 9.30 Family Mass at Blackfriars in Oxford, who wanted to reach out to communities across the world.

We have two charitable aims – the relief of poverty and the advancement of education in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. In practice, that translates into support for a range of projects (18-20 at any one time) mainly in the areas of health, welfare, community development or education.

What We Do

We want our funding really to “make a difference”, so we support small-scale or grass-roots projects with regular grants (currently around £4,000 a year). Occasionally, we make a one-off grant (for things like water tanks or grinding mills). More often a project will be funded for three years and then considered for renewal on a rolling basis.

We always look for projects with some link to the congregation or the Dominican order. Though many have Catholic links, that is not a condition, and we don’t fund any form of evangelisation. We aim to help communities find long-term solutions to their needs, rather than short-term fixes, although, from time to time, we do give money to help with emergencies.

what makes us special

In 2023, we raised over £83,000 and gave grants of around the same amount in total. We spent only £225 on administration costs (bank costs and producing our annual report), which confirms that almost every pound we raise goes directly to supporting our projects.

We also have a personal link with all of our projects. Each of our Trustees and committee members keeps in touch throughout the year with one or two projects and gets to understand the challenges and achievements of the people we are working with. That’s often a very humbling experience and is a wonderful insight into the wider world for them and for the congregation as a whole.

The BOAT Committee meets monthly on Sundays immediately after the 9:30 Family Mass to discuss new and ongoing projects. There is also an annual AGM. Everyone is welcome–you do not need to be a Trustee or committee member to attend our meetings or AGM and we are always eager to hear about new projects that BOAT might be able to support. For information about the next monthly meeting, please email: BoatBlackfriars@gmail.com

You can find out more about BOAT from the overview on the Charity Commission website.

Some of Our Projects

Ethiopia – helping to provide education to the most disadvantaged in the village of Zizencho
Myanmar– enabling communities to have access to clean drinking water by building water tanks
Rwanda– providing entrepreneurship training for those recovering from the traumas of genocide
Jamaica – providing essential supplies and support for staff at a very disadvantaged primary school
India – supporting essential tutoring for the children of rag pickers in a slum outside Delhi
Peru – supporting a township project to reduce childhood malnutrition and domestic violence
Philippines – assisting the indigenous Subaanen people to access health care and education
Uganda – providing mosquito nets to prevent malaria, a leading cause of death amongst local children.

More information about all the different projects supported by BOAT can be found in our Annual Reports, available below.

In addition to our regular projects, we also support one or two particular projects through donations raised specifically during Lent. The BOAT Lenten Appeal is an opportunity to connect through fasting and prayer with communities across the world. In 2022, in response to the world-wide cost of living crisis, exacerbated by the disruptions caused by COVID, the Lenten Appeal raised funds to provide extra food for the many schools supported by BOAT, while in 2023, the Lenten Appeal helped to build a new water well for the Allipalli Children’s Centre in Andhra Pradesh in India..

You can find out more about BOAT from the overview on the Charity Commission website

BOAT LENTEN APPEAL 2025

As governments around the world cut foreign aid, BOAT’s annual Lenten Appeal is all the more pressing. This year, we are seeking your support for two very different, but equally worthy causes.

The first is the Mziwothando Soup Kitchen in Cape Town, South Africa, which is visited regularly by Federico, the son of two very active members of our congregation. Cape Town is the most unequal city in South Africa, with many informal settlements, formerly known as ‘shanty towns.’ The most deprived is Qandu-Qandu, home to 10,000 people living without basic energy, water or sanitation infrastructure. Many live well below the poverty line, often with single, unemployed mothers and families that regularly go hungry. The Soup Kitchen provides a daily hot meal for 60 schoolchildren, but it desperately needs more equipment to meet ever-growing demand. With our support, the Soup Kitchen could purchase a chest freezer, hotplates and pressure cookers, as well as electrical equipment to connect to nearby solar panels. Can you help?

See here for a video of the Mizwothando Soup Kitchen made by Federico in May 2025, or for just the key slides, see here.

We also hope to meet some of the urgent needs of the Hindu tribal people living in rural Pakistan through the Tribal Mission of St Dominic Parish in Yazman Mandi, Bahawalpur. Fr Matthew Jarvis OP, a long-time member of Blackfriars who is now Prior in London, has asked us to help this desperately poor community. As a religious and ethnic minority in a majority Islamic country, the members of this Hindu tribe live a marginal existence and poverty is endemic. The Dominicans are trying to meet some of their most basic needs. For example, the Mission’s schools need furniture, books, and medical supplies for the children, while the women, whose access to healthcare is precarious, need to consult doctors and access medication when they are ill. Can you provide support?

Your donations to the 2025 Lenten Appeal, whether large or small, will have a real impact on the lives of our sisters and brothers Cape Town and rural Pakistan–and if you are giving something up for Lent, please consider donating the savings to the Lenten Appeal.

Thank you for considering our appeal. Even in the face of government cuts to foreign aid, together we can make a real difference!

BOAT will be handing out donation envelopes at the end of Lent after the 9:30am Mass, but you can also donate online by putting ‘BOAT Lenten Appeal’ into the reference field—for information about online donations including how to ensure that BOAT is able to collect Gift Aid, please see below.

Donating to BOAT

We are very lucky with the generosity of the congregation at Blackfriars and a wider group of supporters. We hold regular fundraising events such as cafés and auctions and we sell recycled greeting cards. But we rely on income from our regular donors to be sure we can commit to longer-term funding, as well as for the annual Lenten Appeal. If you would like to support our projects, please consider setting up a Standing Order in favour of BOAT.

With most banks and building societies, you can set up a Standing Order online or over the phone.
Alternatively, you can go into your bank to complete a Standing Order form. You’ll need the BOAT account number and sort code (as well as some personal identification) — BOAT’s details can be found below.

Gift Aid: Your regular and one-off donations will stretch much further if you complete a Gift Aid Declaration form for BOAT, if you haven’t already done so. There is a downloadable Gift Aid form at the bottom of this webpage.

BOAT’s bank account details are as follows:

Beneficiary Name: Blackfriars Overseas Aid Trust
Beneficiary Account Number: 00087533
Beneficiary Sort Code: 30-96-35
Beneficiary’s Bank: Lloyds Bank plc, 1 High Street, Oxford OX1 4AA

If you are making a donation specifically for the Lenten Appeal, please put ‘BOAT Lenten Appeal‘ into the reference box.
Standing Order and Gift Aid Declaration forms are available to download below.

B.O.A.T. Privacy Notice – May 2018

Please see below for an explanation of why and how we use your data, and your rights in respect of that data.

In line with the transparency and information objectives of the General Data Protection Regulation, also known as the GDPR, BOAT, as a data controller, wishes to provide supporters with the following information:

Personal data we may hold

The personal data we may hold includes your name and address, your telephone and email contact details, and your bank account details. We only collect data directly from you, often in connection with a Gift Aid declaration.

Purposes of Processing

We hold your data for our legitimate interests of keeping you informed about BOAT’s activities, maintaining our accounting and tax records and promoting our general charitable purposes.

Recipients

We do not share your personal data with third parties other than our professional advisors, as necessary, and with HMRC if you have completed a Gift Aid declaration.

Retention Period

As many of our supporters have completed Gift Aid declarations, the personal data we hold is part of our tax records. In line with our tax record- keeping obligations, we generally hold your personal data for a period of 7 years after your last contact with us.

Data Subject Rights

Under the GDPR, you may be entitled to obtain information on the processing of your personal data, to object to the processing of your personal data, to make use of your right to data portability and to have your personal data rectified or deleted or its processing restricted. You are also entitled to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, which is generally the supervisory authority where you work and/or are resident.

If you have given us consent for the processing of your personal data, you are entitled to revoke such consent at any time. Such revocation will not affect our continued processing of this personal data if we are entitled to continue doing so for a lawful purpose under the GDPR. For example, we may determine that we need to maintain your personal data for our legitimate purpose of maintaining accurate Gift Aid records.

Contact

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the processing of your personal data or the terms of this Notice or want to exercise your rights as outlined above, you should contact John Thanassoulis or Filomena Nave at the following address: Blackfriars Overseas Aid Trust, c/o Blackfriars Priory, 64 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LY, or via email at: BoatBlackfriars@gmail.com.