Tanzania Itende

JKT stands for Jeshi la Kujenga, the Swahili name for the Tanzanian National Youth Service, a division of the national Army. The program is traced back to the TANU Youth League, formed at the country’s founding, and put into practice by 1967 with programs to train and aid youth in areas of employment, justice, environment, disaster response and agriculture. Itende is one of their youth camps, one where they harvest and process coffee. This means that those staffing station are disadvantaged youths aged 13 – 23 who have volunteered to move to camp Itende for six months, in this case, to learn about coffee. Some graduate into other fields, some in those adjacent to the skills they learned here, and some stay in coffee to create a career. The Tanzanian Coffee Research Institute donated seedlings some years back, and now the area under direct cultivation is the equivalent of a sizeable estate.