Nestlé launches scholarships for students from families of coffee farmers

Nestlé announced today that a total of 36 university students in Yunnan Province had been awarded the "Nestlé Scholarship" for 2015-2016. Representatives from China Women's Development Foundation, Puer City's Women's Development Foundation, Puer City's Committee for the Wellbeing of the Youth, Tea and Coffee Industry Development Office of Puer and Nestlé representatives attended the "Nestlé Scholarship" presentation ceremony.

Nestlé has set up a scholarship program in Yunnan since 2013, which is open to outstanding students from families of coffee farmers who are registered under Nestlé Agricultural Services Department. The program encourages the students to pursue a high-level professional education and also rewards farmers for their contribution in the development of the local coffee industry. All scholarships are fully funded by Nestlé, and are selected based on an open, transparent and merit-based process, under the supervision and guidance of the Puer City's Committee for the Wellbeing of the Youth and jointly implemented by China Women's Development Foundation, Puer City's Women's Development Foundation and Nestlé China.

The Nestlé Scholarship offers 5,000 RMB per year for each person, and an outstanding student will enjoy up to four years of consecutive funding. The scholarship is open to undergraduate, college and vocational school students, and applicants will undergo an open and transparent selection that takes into account their academic performance, social work experience and family economic status, among other factors. In order to encourage long-term development of the local coffee industry, the scholarship gives priority to students majoring in agriculture-related majors. As long as students provide corresponding academic progress or proof of engagement in volunteering work and other social services, they would be able to continue applying for this scholarship until graduation.

Besides, this year witnessed a photograph competition run by the organizer. Students took pictures that demonstrated the beautiful moments of their parents planting coffee during their family union in winter holiday. This activity helped them to understand the hardship of their parents in coffee planting and to feel the joy and enjoyment thereof. The students all had a lot of takeaways from the event and expressed their gratitude to their hardworking parents for their cultivation at the award ceremony.

As the first multinational enterprise to invest in agriculture industry in the southwestern region of China, Nestlé has always stuck to the company motto of Creating Shared Value, devoted to promote industrialization of coffee business with the support of related Yunnan governmental organizations. With different parties' effort, coffee industry in Yunnan has achieved a great leap forward. Yunnan is becoming a vigorous, profiting and world famous place of producing quality Arabica coffee bean. Nestlé's coffee development project in Yunnan has won recognition from different walks of society as it has received UN "2012 World Business and Development Award" and UN's "2012 Global Compact China Best Practice". Since 2014-2015 purchase season, all coffee beans purchased by Nestlé in Yunnan were certified by 4C, which has laid a solid foundation for the long term sustainable development of coffee industry in Puer. Nescafé Coffee Center combining the functions of training, experiments and storage will be completed in March 2016.

Nestléhas been committed to supporting the education cause andhas always taken encouraging education andcultivating talents as one of its major concerns in rural development projects and food safety promotion. Since 2009, Nestlé has established a complete set of "Nestlé Scholarship" programs in China to encourage and support the excellent students in character and learning, those developed in all-round way and thosethat are committed to scientific research in the field of food safetyfrom rural families. At present, three programs have been established under"Nestlé Scholarship", including: "NestléScholarship for the Farmers'Children"targeted at the coffee and milk supply households; "Nestlé SanhaoScholarship" targeted atstudents in Zhuwa Primary School in Pixian County in the Wenchuan earthquake region which has receivedsupport ofNestlé previously; and "NestléFood Safety Scholarship"in cooperation with China Agriculture University to promote food safety research.