Through Redefining the Heart of Tea, anyone and everyone is invited to sponsor a self-powered Freeplay Lifeline radio for poor tea farmers in rural Kenya. Lifeline radios will make it possible for tea farmers, who have no access to education or media communication, to learn about sustainable tea farming; receiveweather reports; HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention; and broaden the boundaries of their lives and those of their children. The Highland Tea Company will acknowledge your contribution in the communities that benefit from your involvement. Highland Tea will label your name and address on the bottom of each radioyou sponsor, giving you an opportunity to be physically connected to Kenya’s tea farmers.
Radio is the primary means of mass communication in Africa. A simple radio, which we in the developed world take for granted as a low-tech fact of life, has the power to change the fate of millions of people. Today, the majority of Kenya’s tea farmers are illiterate. Most are without access to electricity and cannot afford the ongoing cost of batteries. The Freeplay Foundation’s award-winning Lifeline radio does not require batteries or electricity. It gives tea farmers access to vital information they otherwise would be unable to hear.
Using the Lifeline, these farmers can learn about new methods of farming and husbandry that could impact their farming output significantly. With access to daily weather forecasts, they can anticipate El Nino, drought or other factors that have major impact on their tea crops.
Without any information about how HIV/AIDS is spread or treated, tea growers and pickers are at increased rate of contracting and dying from the disease, and infecting loved ones. A tea picker’s child does not know that in America, people dress up to drink the tea her mother picks, and that one day she could go to school in that country.
The Lifeline radio can change of all that, profoundly impacting the world of a child, a parent, a community, a country. The radio can control the spread of a disease, raise a child’s dreams and aspirations, and let a farmer know that his crop is organic and valuable. The radio can create a connection between Kenya’s tea farmers and the people who buy and benefit from their teas each day. The radio can create powerful possibilities.
To learn more about the Lifeline radio and the work of the Freeplay Foundation, visit www.freeplayfoundation.org. The Freeplay Foundation is a registered 501 (c) (3) non-profit in the USA, a registered not-for-profit organization in the UK, and a registered Section 21 Company charity in South Africa.
Each radio costs $65 to deliver to tea farmers. Please make all donations payable to the Freeplay Foundation, and clearly designate that your donation is for The Highland Tea Company’s “Redefining the Heart of Tea” project.
