Gender Equality Ghana Project #8733

Help 375 Just Shea Women Harvest Safer, Earn More

by One Village Planet-Women's Development Initiative

Help 375 Just Shea Women Harvest Safer, Earn More

Project Report | Jan 6, 2015
Thank you for everything we accomplished this year! We think you're super rad.

By Danielle and Wicki and all the Just Shea Women | Project Team

Increased safety means increased income for women

This has been a momentous year! Thank you for the support!

WE GREW the Just Shea Program from 50 women to reach a wonderful 375 women. And we have hundreds more on an active waiting list.

Together we can bring these women into the Just Shea Collective fold. Help them purchase their Pay it Forward safety kits with a loan paid back in sheanuts. So they can collect shea more safely, more efficiently and harvest an even larger crop to sell at double the price they'd earn without the Just Shea Collective.

WE FORGED PARTNERSHIPS

with NRG and GCP Solar to add handheld solar lights to the Just Shea safety kits so the Just Shea Women can travel to, and harvest safely in, the bush when they must collect sheanuts in the dark. (And their kids use them to study at night, too!)

with the Savannah Fruits Company and the retail brand Shea Moisture to facilitate a fully transparent shea supply chain, from the women who collect the wild fallen shea fruit, to the bottle on your bathroom shelf.

and with the Social Impact Research Lab at the Schulich School of Business, and academics from the business schools at the Universities of Denver, Utah and Ghana, to measure and share the impact of our safety program and the new Just Shea Social Loan Fund we've launched so that women can cover urgent cash needs in the lean season and at the same time aggregate their crop and earn higher prices.

WE BROUGHT into our fold

five new wonderful board members and some amazing advisors and volunteers to support and guide our growth. Welcome Loren and Brian and Ben and Ellen and Allen. Welcome Duke and Henry and Gloria and Arthur and Prakash and Marc and Louise and Sarah and Titania and Rebecca and Erin and Hedda and Sandra, who built our brand new website www.justshea.org!

and a handful of cool new vendors for the Just Shea Products, including the Carbon Beauty Amazon Store.

WE WERE PROUD to be

APPOINTED again to serve on the Global Shea Alliance Sustainability Working Group to help set ethical industry standards.

SELECTED as one of six to participate in a pitching session for the European Venture Philanthropy Association’s annual meeting in Berlin and, for the third time, to host a delegation from the US State Department’s African Women Entrepreneurship Program.

FEATURED in profiles in the New York Times and CoCa Cola, and in a documentary for China Central Television's Faces of Africa series.

And we know that in 2015 will be even more proud of what we will do together.

Happy Happy Holidays to our supporters around the world!

With Gratitude,
Danielle and Wicki and all the Just Shea Women

We are all so grateful for your believing...

many small actions together can change the world.

Permalink

Oct 7, 2014
We're Launching the Just Shea Social Loan Fund and Global Giving is Matching Donations October 15

By Danielle, Wicki and Fatimah | Project Leaders

She will use this shea as collateral for a loan

At the Clinton Global Initiative annual summit last week so much attention was given to how to augment the world’s economies, in all ways. Quality of life, education, and safety. One of the biggest needs that arises again and again, whether it is discussed by micro lending guru Muhammad Yunus, correspondent Katie Couric, Hilary Clinton or the Prime Minister of Haiti, is “How to get capital to the workers, harvesters, or mini entrepreneurs, often women, who really need it?”

At JUST SHEA we are proud to say that we have been current with the needs of rural families and have been addressing them with our harvesters for two years now. I bet you recall that we now have 375 JUST SHEA Women in our program, all of them equipped with safety gear (thanks to you and our generous partners at Moxie, NRG and Ghana Capital Partners) to protect them against poisonous snakes so they can harvest more, and all of them participating in a crop aggregation warehouse program that has seen their incomes double in the last year. But you may not know that we also have a small micro loan fund, which is insured by bags of shea that women in the JUST SHEA collaborative can utilize.

But now we want to increase the amount of micro loans we can give, so more women can earn more, and it seems that others have been impressed with our work, because wonder-founder Danielle Warren has been asked to participate in a “pitching” session in Berlin in November designed to put our ideas in front of a diverse groups of multi-national funders.

Of course we hope this will lead to new investments, but beyond that we need to have the continued support of our stalwart supporters. That would be you.

We are seeking an inner circle of support of $10,000 that will form the foundation of our micro loan program. Each of these loans will be repaid within 18 months and will then be available to the next women in line. So far we have had 100% repayment.

Well, I bet you are asking, What do women use these loans for?

Glad you asked, because the list is inspiring in itself. They want to buy seeds to plant crops for food and for sale, buy books and pencils for their children so they can get smarter in school, invest in small businesses, go to the clinic to deliver their babies. These may seem like small things for us. But for these women, for these families, it is life changing.

So please join us because on October 15^th any donation you make will be doubled by the generous folks at Global Giving.

Mark your calendars, ping yourself. Or stay up until then. But do not miss this opportunity.

With so much Gratitude,

Danielle, Wicki, Fatimah, Fauzia, Assembly and all the Just Shea Ladies existing and to come.

Links:

Attachments:

Thanks to our volunteers from GGTime for this! (PDF)

2 Attachments

Permalink

Jul 16, 2014
Shine a Light on Just Shea Women with Matching TODAY ONLY! (Wednesday July 16th)

By Danielle, Wicki and Fatimah | Project Leaders

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Organization Information

One Village Planet-Women's Development Initiative

Location: New York - USA
Website: http://www.ovp-wdi.org

Project Leader:
Danielle Grace Warren
NY , NY United States

Retired Project!

This project is no longer accepting donations.

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