Women in Kperisi in the Wa Municipality of the Upper West Region of Ghana have received support from evanhealy and its development partner WACA. The two companies are supporting the women get Fair Trade and Organic Certification for their Shea Butter products.
The initiative is to help provide livelihood support to the women in the form of capacity training in Shea Butter picking, processing, marketing, soap making among others to help improve their standards of living and the quality and marketability of their Shea Butter.
The women numbering about 35 have been assured of an already market in the United States and Canada. In this light, evanhealy and its development partner are working assiduously to ensure that quality Shea Butter is produced for the international market.
Prof. Wayne Dunn, President of WACA in an interaction with the women in Kperisi assured them of his company’s readiness to support them improve their lives by providing them with a constant ready market in the US and Canada and by helping to get their products certified. He said the certification process is quite tedious and expensive but that the two development partners would do all they can to help them.
According to him, the best way to empower people particularly women is to help build their capacity by training them to acquire sustainable livelihoods. He said it was unacceptable for various organizations, whether local or international to continuously write proposals to donor partners for funding in the name of helping poor people in Northern Ghana but which many a time end up in the pockets of individuals. He said the two partners in the near future would extend their support to other women in the region and this he believes will go a long way to help alleviate poverty in many homes.
Evan Healy, founder of evanhealy said, ‘We are pleased to continue our direct support to the women and families that make this wonderful Shea Butter’.
A resource person who is also the Managing Director of Meridian Agricultural Services (MAS), Mr. Aaron Attefa Ampofo took the women through various training models. He appealed to them to send their children to school and not engage them in the collection of shea nuts or other duties that would affect their learning adversely.
Evanhealy is an artisan brand of certified organic skin care. The company was founded in 1999 by Evan Healy and David Gordon and is based in San Diego, California in the United States of America. The brand is sold in 600 natural foods stores in USA and Canada. The company works with family farms, women’s cooperatives and tribal villages as part of their ‘Faces of the Earth’ initiative to bring the plant knowledge of indigenous people to the western world.

Francis Xavier Tuokuu is a Writer, Blogger and Consultant on Corporate Social Responsibility. He is the Executive Director of Centre for Responsible Business-Ghana (centreforresponsiblebusiness.blogspot.com). You can reach him via fxtuokuu@yahoo.com or +233 506425707