By Us | Project Leader
Dear All--
The summer months in the northern hemisphere mean longer days, warm temperatures and a more languid style of living. For the women in the in Northern Ghana, where Just Shea and One Village Planet-Women’s Development Initiative is based, summer means cracking groundnuts (peanuts) while we bag and send all of their shea to the warehouse.
The lifestyle for shea harvesters, and these are the women we preference in our program with One Village Planet-Women’s Development Initiative and Just Shea, work all the time. They are wives, mothers, often village leaders and farmers who create small private gardens for their families and tirelessly harvest and process the sheanuts; a most important crop. So valuable it is refereed to as women’s gold.
Danielle Warren, our founder, has decamped to living full time in Tamale, in the northern Ghana region where most of our work takes place. During this summer quarter Danielle spends time with our local staff in the field. Building capacity and laughing whenever we can.
Our work in the US is centered around co-founder Wickham Boyle working in advocacy, outreach and gaining better product placement for the Just Shea brand that keeps our mission of “Saving your skin and women’s lives” as vital and important as ever. We filled large orders of Urban Zen in NYC, Long Island and Denver Colorado. To this end our Just Shea trademark was officially registered and this will help us begin to market a potential new line of products to raise the awareness for shea harvesting, which is still an unregulated, and thus often unsafe endeavor.
We also work in concert with other like-minded organizations and one of these, Girl Tank posted a story about our work in and was republished by Coca Cola. We also continue to help the people at the Voss Foundation who endeavor to provide clean drinking water through out Africa.
In NYC Wicki spoke at Eileen Fisher’s conference on women’s leadership and we hope this involvement may lead to a grant in the future. Also as accolades Wicki was named an Encore Fellow and a finalist for the Purpose Prize. While Danielle carried our banner to Burkina Faso to Global Shea Alliance conference, one of our best board members, Tejal Wadwhani’s daughter took the lead on a bake sale that brought in over 200 dollars and was a great lift to all of our spirits.
In the end we are the confluence of women working across the globe. We are heartened by the volunteers, the tireless staff and board members who realize that agriculture can be sustainable when it is safer and women who work safer, work better and this creates stronger families and a big, better world. We are honored to be a part of the Global Giving Community.
Links:
By Danielle and Wicki and all the Just Shea Women | Project Team
By Danielle and Wicki and all the Just Shea Women | Project Team
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