Winifred Annie Coate

Winifred Annie Coate MBE (25 April 1893 – 23 November 1977) was a British missionary headteacher and relief organizer. She established a model community in Zerqa where she found water and used this to supply water, work and land for refugees in that area of Jordan.

Life Coate was born in London Borough of Islington in 1893. She went to Westfield College in London. After she graduated with an English degree she went on to the Church Missionary Society College.

In 1928 Coate became the principal of the Jerusalem Girls' College. She had been head hunted by Mabel Warburton who was the outgoing principal of the school. In 1940 the school opened new Kindergarten facilities in Germantown. In 1943 the staff decided that too much was being asked of them and she was asked to leave. The water enabled her to establish fifty farms led by previously landless peasants. They were Bedouin, from Palestine and Jordan. Her project became a model for similar schemes where charity money was used to not just supply relief but also work and land.

Coate died in Cheam in 1977 after she had been flown back to the UK.