As a special project,
Coffeecare has transfered funds to assist with the education of two special little women. The plight of Monica and Betira Valence was brought to us by Sister Amelia Mkesafari, who is their Aunt. Monica and Betira's father, a rural farmer, died. Needless to say, the future success of these girls was in doubt. In 2011, we were able to raise 1,300 dollars which provided for the education of both Monica and Betira. They are currently attending St. Severine's boarding school in Biharamulo district.

SPECIAL NOTICE!

THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTERS, OUR FUND RAISING GOAL OF 1,300 DOLLARS FOR 2012 HAS BEEN MET.  OUR PAYPAL VERIFIED DONATION BUTTON IS IN PLACE SHOULD ANYONE WISH TO HELP US WITH THE ONGOING COSTS OF DOING BUSINESS, SUCH AS:

Printing of coffee labels that are affixed to our product by
paid vocational workers at ahrc.org

Website costs

Monthly Amazon fees charged for listing  our gourmet coffee:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005250U5I

A future, professional fund raising campaign

Your donation is tax deductible and you will receive an immediate receipt.

                                                                     Monica and Betira Valence




                                                                          

This 100% Tanzanian AA coffee is imported from Sweet Unity Farms Coffee Cooperative (Tanzania). The farm is managed by David Robinson, son of baseball great Jackie Robinson. Only ripe, shade grown “cherries” that contain Tanzanian AA beans are picked. The beans are separated from the cherries, dried, packed in 60 kilo sacks, then shipped to the United States.

After inspection and certification by  the United States Department of Agriculture, the Tanzanian AA green beans are roasted and ground to order.

To see a slide show on how we operate, click here and hit the F5 key after it opens.


 "... there  is still only 1 doctor for every 25,000 people and one dentist for every 300,000 people."

"The rate of children dying before they reach their 5th year of life has been calculated to be 30 times greater than those in developed countries... "


These children are affected by Burkitt's Lymphoma, an endemic cancer that is curable with a 50 dollar injection. The average family earns 50 dollars a month, so many children go untreated. The cancer metastasizes, causes disfigurement, then death. Your coffee purchase will help fund a special health care initiative to relieve this type of unnecessary pain, suffering and death.








The Director of Bugando Hospital, Dr. Charles Majinge, will use the funds Coffeecare raises to develop health care initiatives for the rural farmers. Below is the plan that has been submitted by Dr. Majinge:

HEALTH SUPPORT FUND

INTRODUCTION

Bugando Medical Centre is a Consulting and Teaching Hospital established by Catholic Church and officially started its operations in 1971. The hospital is being run in partnership with the Government as Referral and Consultant Hospital for Lake and Western Zones, through an agreement entered on 23^rd October, 1985. The Bugando Medical Centre was incorporated as a body corporate on 27^th January, 1988 under the provisions of Trustees Incorporation Ordinance (Cap. 375) of 1956. The hospital is one of the four referral hospitals in Tanzania. The mission of Bugando Medical Centre is to provide specialist quality care, consultancy, research and training in health guided by the church ethics and morals.

Bugando Medical Centre is conscious of the rapid changing policies in health care services provisions. The Community in collaboration with the Centre has planned to establish “Rural Farmers Health Support Fund” to cater for cotton and coffee rural farmers community in the Lake Zone area. The fund will provide comprehensive health care services for the rural farmers community served by the health centres, district hospitals, regional hospitals and referral hospitals for special cases. The fund objectives include ensuring that rural farmers community have access to health care services at all time, to promote the health and well-being of the rural farmers community, to improve and maximize productivity of the rural farmers community, to provide reliable and quality health care services to the rural farmers community and increase referrals of rural farmers community from regional hospitals.

Bugando Medical Centre plays a vital role in the lives of people in Tanzania, particularly in the lake zone area for health care service provisions to referred patients. We believe that this project will constantly care and educate rural farmers community on medical related issues and introduce our hospital and services to the rural farmers community. As a result we anticipate a rise in a number of subscribers yearly to sustain, improve and maintain the provision of services to the members. This is not intended to be an Insurance Company or agent but a hospital support fund for farmers to access all levels of health care in order to improve their health and increase productivity.

To run the project successfully, it has been estimated that the prospective members of the fund contribute at least sh 10,000/= yearly from their proceedings during marketing seasons for each household. Your contribution to fund the project will support our efforts to make the project viable and sustainable to meet ever-growing costs of medical care services to the members of the fund, and we are excited about the prospect of partnering with you. Thank you for your initiatives to support the project.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The need for Rural Farmers Health Support Fund is important. Bugando Medical Centre estimates that the number of underserved cotton and coffee rural farmers community are expected to increase in the Lake Zone area. The population increases within the limited productive agricultural area. The income earned from agriculture proceeds are distributed among the family necessities including health care costs. Rarely rural farmers save some income to cater for their health care. In most cases, they seriously suffer when fall sick and some time lost life, because they found themselves with little or without anything to pay for their medical treatments. The establishment of the Health Support Fund will greatly help the needy community for their health care.

Most of the rural farmers community take significant amount of time for treatments, especially by using local medicines which in most cases are inappropriate and expensive. This is attributable to lack of health education services, reliable source of income and infrastructures which in turn are government owned facilities designed to provide free services in some cases. The cotton and coffee rural farmers’ community at the Lake Zone area are small-scale farmers of seasonal low-income earnings capacity.

In Tanzania cotton is largely produced by smallholder farmers with average farms being 1.5 hectares. Most cotton farmers are not mechanized; they lack the use of fertilizers, chemicals and irrigation. Cotton farming employs some 500,000 rural households, mainly in Lake Zone-Mwanza, Shinyanga, Mara and Kagera Regions. An undertaking that many Tanzanians could have snubbed had it not been probably the passion and traditional bondage of crop - is showing prospects of becoming one of the country’s high paying economic venture. At productivity of 300 kg per acre and price ranging between Shs. 500/= and Shs. 650/= per kg, Tanzania cotton farmers earn between Shs. 150,000/= and Shs. 195,000/= per acre annually, certainly a huge loss compared to production cost.

Kagera Co-operative Union (KCU) currently comprises some 90,000 small-scale coffee farmers organized in 124 Village Co-operatives. In total there are upwards of 130,000 small-holders coffee farmers in the region. Most of those who are not members of KCU are affiliated to Karagwe District Co-operative Union in Kagera, which is also fair-trade certified.

In Kagera “Small-Scale” means half a hectare of land on average, which must feed a family of six and generate sufficient cash income, through sales of coffee, to pay for school fees, clothing, health care and all the daily necessities. In kagera for a small-farmer it’s quite a challenge to make ends meet.

As the price of coffee at the world market has appreciated reaching 4 USD (Shs.6,000/=) per kg, there are efforts underway locally to promote production of the crop. In Tarime (Mara) the price of unprocessed coffee has increased from 180/= to 950/= between 2006 and 2010. Between May and September 2010, Tarime has been leading among the seven districts in coffee production after selling 1558 tonnes, Sengerema (Mwanza) 418 tonnes, Serengeti (Mara) 80 tonnes, Rorya (Mara) 40 tonnes, Musoma (Mara) 2 tonnes, Geita (Mwanza) 8 tonnes and Ukelewe (Mwanza) 4.2 tonnes.

Major obstacle to the rural farmers’ community in our country includes lack of assurance to access health care facilities, being healthy it is a corner stone to accelerate and increase production capacity. Lake Zone farmers who grow cotton and coffee are victims of the situation, which is derived from poor-income that does not sustain even for their basic needs. It is impossible to live without health support facilities these days. With the rising cost of health care some people are finding it difficult to find affordable coverage. Nowadays, most of the employees are covered through the established health insurance policies. Health support fund most often provide coverage for: doctors’ visits, prescriptions, medical testing, specialized care and surgical procedures.

If the Rural Farmers Health Support Fund Project is not undertaken, low-income coffee and cotton rural farmers community would not be able to receive-in their own community centre and hospitals-health care designed to promote, improve and maintain their standard of living.

OBJECTIVES OF THE HEALTH SUPPORT FUND INCLUDE

• To enable the cotton and coffee rural farmers community around the lake zone access appropriate health care services

• To promote the health and well-being of the coffee and cotton rural farmers community
  

• To reduce unnecessary death within the targeted population of the rural farmers community
  

• To improve and increase the productivity of the targeted rural farmers’ community as a result of improved health care.

• To support payments for provision of reliable, standard and quality health care services to the targeted rural farmers community at an affordable costs.

• To provide health care education services within the targeted rural farmers community.

STRATEGIES

In order to achieve the objectives for the Lake Zone, Cotton and Coffee Rural Farmers Health Support Fund, Bugando Medical Centre takes responsibilities of Managing, Monitoring, Supervising, Evaluating and controlling the operations of the Health Support Fund as a coordinating partner of the Fund. Even though it will be run as a stand alone project, Bugando Medical Centre would provide and utilize some of its resources mainly offices and other operational logistics for close administration of the Health Fund, to ensure that the Fund operate efficiently and effectively in delivering services to the needy community as being done for other projects like: HIV/AIDS Projects i.e. Aids relief Project, CoAg Project and Food for the Poor Project, which operates smoothly and successfully.

The idea of involving the rural farmers’ community to save by contributing towards the common fund for their health care, is a new program within the community of the Lake Zone. Bugando Medical Centre will organize and conduct meetings with the prospective members, co-operative societies, health centres and hospitals within the community for mobilization exercise. This process will make the project understood and popular, resulting into significant enrollments of the targeted rural farmers’ community.

The Fund Management plans to use free choice joining strategy, whereby the registered members would be issued with a special card, which will be regarded as their identification for obtaining health care services at the agreed health centres and hospitals. The fund caters for health care service costs to the members and their families (i.e. husband and wife with four children under the age of 18, whereas children above eighteen will be required to form new household). The subscription towards the fund is estimated at shs. 10,000/= per year from each household during the marketing seasons in addition to the prospective donor’s contribution.

The agreed and registered members of the fund would fill-in the designed forms which will be treated as agreement forms between the member and the fund. After completion of the agreement form, one of the copies has to be submitted to member’s co-operative society for subscription collection processes during marketing seasons-the fund management has planned to use the co-operative societies to collect members’ subscriptions and deposit the same into Fund Bank Account.

The selected and agreed health care services providers will prepare a comprehensive report and submit to the Fund Office as a claim for medical treatment services rendered to the fund members and their dependants. The report should clearly indicate the full particulars of the patient, diagnosis (type of disease) and type of treatment/drug provided. The fund management officers, takes responsibility of scrutinizing the claims and effect the payments where and when satisfies on accuracy, completeness and genuineness of the information there on.

Finally the fund management will prepare periodic reports basing on finances, members’ statistical data, medical and management information for monitoring, controlling and decision making purposes for project development processes.