A GROUP of students have been showing off their entrepreneurial skills to raise more than £2,000 for charity.

The team from Middlesbrough’s Macmillan Academy launched their own juice business to support children’s charity COCO (Comrades of Children Overseas).

The money will be used to boost a COCO project in one of the poorest areas of Tanzania, which encourages enterprise through the provision of small loans.

Lucy Philipson, chief executive of COCO, said: “The students have done a brilliant job of raising funds in such a dynamic and productive way. It’s important for them to understand that the money they have raised will be invested in sustainable projects in East Africa, which will ultimately help young people over there access the education that extreme poverty can often deny them.”

The students learned about the COCO Income Generation Programme initiative in East Africa, which enables farmers to run sustainable agriculture projects and provide education for future generations, helping to reduce poverty.

Dr David Wilson-Stonestreet, of Macmillan Academy, added: “I am very proud of the efforts of all of our enterprise students. They have helped to raise such an amazing amount of money and brought further awareness to our students as to how lucky they are that they have access to experiences and education that they can fortunately take for granted.”

To find out more about the charity visit www.coco.org.uk or call 0191-261-7427.