Fair trade - fair futures : the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union scholarship programme for orphan and vulnerable children

This case study was conducted in Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania and focuses on the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCU) which initiated a programme to support the educational needs of orphans and other children made vulnerable by AIDS.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic remains a major development challenge for most developing nations, including Tanzania. The epidemic has seen the number of children who are orphans and/or vulnerable increase. In response to this trend many community based initiatives have emerged to address this challenge. This study reports on one of these initiatives - The Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union scholarship programme for Orphan and Vulnerable Children, which is financed through revenues generated from the sale of coffee through Fair Trade. The study finds that the initiative is contributing to the process of human capital development, which is very much needed to increase agricultural productivity in the long term and concludes by identifying some measures that could be taken for strengthening the impact of the initiative.