Kipepeo Clothing: Beautiful shirts doing beautiful things.

"Kipepeo supports the idea that even something small such as a drawing in a child´s school book in Tanzania can make the world a better place and change someone´s life."

Kipepeo (Kiswahili: butterfly) is a social business, whose primary endeavor is to support schools and promote education in Tanzania. To accomplish this goal, we sell fair produced T-shirts, printed with the designs straight from the pupils minds, imaginations, and hands. These creations are resulted from their nursery school lessons. Each and every Kipepeo shirt and product is ethically made and 100% fair produced. These are high quality garments made of bio-combed cotton from East Africa. Several volunteers in Germany offer their free time, assisting in the creation of each product. This makes every shirt absolutely unique!

For each product we sell, we are supporting the schools in many ways. Ranging from school fees, food, medical supplies and support, stationary and writing tools, to new school buildings!

In the long run, we not only wish to support schools and promote education in Tanzania but also promote Kipepeo as an "organic brand", supporting the idea of sustainable consumption and fair trade.

Our Kipepeo shirts are "companions" - for travellers, lateral thinkers and everyone who wants to make the world a better place.

You should support this unique project for the same reasons it was founded back in 2009:

The idea to start Kipepeo Clothing arose after Martin had spent 5 months teaching english and maths courses to first graders at the Mecsons Primary & Nursery School in Arusha, Tanzania. Before going back to Germany, Martin received a love letter with a small drawing by a 7-year old girl named Abigail. The drawing pictured a little man with an enormous head and the words "Love you". As a small memento of the time in Tanzania, Martin printed Abigail´s drawing on a plain white shirt as soon as he was back in Germany. The idea to sell the shirt for a good cause and to support education in Tanzania came up a few months later, when Martin was informed that Abigail´s parents couldn´t afford to pay her school fees any longer. Since then Kipepeo Clothing has grown in many ways: hundreds of shirts have been sold, new designs have been added and new volunteers have joined to help with the increasing work load. Most importantly though, since then Kipepeo constantly supported the children of two schools in Tanzania by paying their school and medical fees and financing the construction of new school buildings.

Abigail will graduate in September 2014 and is planning to start High School soon.

Starting in April 2014, we are planning to produce Kipepeo shirts with our own cuts and colours produced in Tanzania. We are hoping to gradually expand our business, however, more sales also mean higher advance payments and time that we, still working as volunteers, need to invest. We therefore need a sufficient financial buffer in order to increase our shirt stock, pay our office rent and to make pre-payments for production and printing for a larger amount of shirts.