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 | Dec 18, 2012
We are succeeding and we want to do more, with you

By Danielle Grace Warren and Wicki Boyle | Project Founders

Dear Just Shea family,

We write family because supporter is just not enough to express how we feel about the ongoing support you give us. That support allows us to reach out and support women shea harvesters and their families in the village of Gushie, in Northern Ghana.

Thanks to your support, the Just Shea Program is providing women in the Gushie Shea Nut Collective with protective gear: hooded raincoats, boots and gloves so they can harvest more safely, more efficiently and thus have a better crop. And, to better sell this crop, we built a spacious 16X60 silo right on the main road to town so that buyers will purchase from the Collective, thus getting the women a better price.

So this is the end of the year. And yes we are asking for another infusion of funds to help us continue our work.

WHY? Well, it's simple: We are succeeding and we want to do more, with your help.

Here is what we did in 2012:

Purchased an acre of land and constructed a storage silo complete with a quality control platform and fabulous roadfront signage that links to a dedicated cell phone to help increase shea nut sales
Expanded the Just Shea safety program to include 40 women. (There a waiting list of 100 more who want to join!)
We hired a wonderful local women Fatimah to work with us and we opened a tiny office in Tamale, the nearest town to our pilot village of Gushie.
We have been endorsed by so many African and American governmental and local groups. Here are a few: USAID, the Global Shea Alliance, West Africa Trade Hub, the Ghanaian Ministries of Environment, Agriculture, and Women's and Children's Affairs.
We received a generous grant from a private foundation to expand our Just Shea operations.

SO GIVE NOW, give generously if you're able. And help us expand our program to include other deserving mothers in Gushie and their families.

Happy Holidays and peace and prosperity in the new year for us all!

Wicki and Danielle and all the gang across the seas

Links:

Permalink

Sep 19, 2012
Saving lives, doubling incomes. Yup, we're doing that.

By Danielle Grace Warren and Wicki Boyle | Project Founders

Gushie's elder, Magazia at the Gushie silo gates.

Coming to you direct from Gushie, where our Project Founder Danielle Warren has been in the field making sure all the gears and parts that are the Just Shea Program machine are well oiled and in place in preparation for the Gushie Women Sheanut Harvesters’ first collective sale.

In late August we had a series of inspiring meetings with the women in the collective, with the assistance of our new Program Director Fatimah Zubair—a local and long-time volunteer on the project, who has been assigned by the Ghana National Secretariat to work full time with us for her one year Term of Service. Together we determined needs and goals, and set to work over the next month to address and fulfill them.

We constructed a 30 x 60 foot concrete slab alongside the silo that will serve as a quality control and drying area to inspect collective sheanuts before weighing and bagging, built 20 pallets to line the silo floor and keep the sheanuts dry during storage. As well we established an intake receipt and micro-loan system that will allow each woman in the collective to take out a small loan of up to six dollars using the sheanuts she has stored as collateral, to help encourage the collective to hold out for the few months they need to wait for the price of shea to rise. Six bucks may not seem like a much, but when your total income is 20 dollars a year, it makes an incredible difference.

We’re full steam ahead and working to secure a buyer for the women’s sheanuts in November, when the selling price is most favorable to them.

Because of you, because of what we have done together, the women in the Gushie Women’s Sheanut Collective are poised to double their income this year. And, not only that, not a single snakebite was suffered among them this harvest season. Saving lives, doubling incomes…Yup, we’re doing that.

Now let’s all do what we can to make sure the 123 women who are on the waiting list can join us too!

We’ve included a few snapshots below and, just as soon as Danielle can get to a place where it doesn’t take an hour to upload a photo, we’ll be posting lots more to our Just Shea Facebook page. So make sure we’ve got your thumbs up there to get them in your feed.

Onward. With Gratitude.

Tipagaya,

Danielle, Wicki and the Just Shea Program Team

Strategic planning with the Just Shea Collective.

Masonry crew at work on the sheanut drying area.

We're excited about the storage pallets, too.

Quality control training on the new drying area.

Bagging Just Shea sheanuts for the first big sale.

Links:

Permalink

Jun 21, 2012
The silo is up in Gushie...women flood in to join the program.

By Danielle Grace Warren and Wicki Boyle | Project Founders

Kids at first Just Shea safety gear distribution.

On June 4^th we had our first “Collective Welcome to Summer" to benefit the Just Shea Program under a full moon on the terrace of a fellow GlobalGiving supporter's office in mid-town Manhattan.

We were inspired to create this event for our supporters because of the success of our GlobalGiving Campaign. Many of you came to toast to these incredible women with us, and the overwhelming sentiment, what we found ourselves repeating to one another throughout the evening: It doesn’t take a whole lot to create an enormous impact in the lives of so many.

Since our last update we’ve raised enough funds to include an additional 25 women in our Just Shea Program. That means 25 more women will be provided with safety gear so they can harvest without fear of vipers and mambas, and become members of the Gushie Women's Shea Nut Collective. This will help them earn more income from their Shea so they can better provide for themselves and their children.

In April we we’re thrilled to report that we completed the construction of the first-ever cooperative women’s storage silo. (Check out the photos of the building going up here!) Since then, more than 100 additional women in Gushie have come forward, asking to participate in the safety gear and silo program. And we are committed to raising the funds to make that happen.

With your help, the Just Shea Program is giving women the collective leverage they need to create, from the village up, one village at a time, a just and equitable supply chain for their Shea nuts—and it doesn’t take a whole lot to make that happen.

Tipagaya (“We Appreciate”)

The Gushie Silo is on the main N.S. Hwy in Ghana

Their mom's are in the Gushie Sheanut Collective.

And we think we're pressured into multi-tasking?!

A Collective Welcome to Summer.

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.