May
17
2008
Meeting the people who make the stuff we buy
Author: Robin BrowneI have always believed that the most powerful way to show how the actions of companies engaged in the social economy help improve people’s lives is to tell those people’s stories.
I had the rare opportunity yesterday to meet five people involved in fair trade, organic shea butter production in Mali and Burkina Faso, West Africa. Fatoumata Natié Coulibaly, Lalayssa Niare and Souleymane Traoré all work with the Mali-based Cooperative of Shea Butter of the rural district of Siby (COPROKASI) that runs La Maison du karité. Abou Dradin Tagnan and Mariane Bassia work with Burkina Faso’s Union des Groupements de Productrices de Produits de Karité (UGPPK) des provinces de la Sissili et du Ziro.
Bridgehead, that sells fair trade coffee, hosted the event at their store on Albert and Bank St. in Ottawa – a great marketing move by them.
They were all here on a tour to market their fair trade, organic certified Shea butter products. A few things they said stuck with me in particular:
- Shea butter is produced exclusively by women – the men I met were coop managers. This is because, before shea butter was a business, it was used for a variety of household and personal needs like cooking and moisturizing skin. These were activities done by women so the women have simply been helped to commercialize what they were already doing.
- 30% of the UGPPK’s products are fair trade – and this accounts for 60% of their revenues.
- UGPPK uses the fair trade premiums it gets for a variety of community-based initiatives including literacy programs for women and HIV prevention programs. Abou said Burkina Faso has the second highest HIV rate in West Africa after Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast produces nearly half the world’s cocoa making it literally the largest cocoa producer on earth.
- Guarantee fair trade premiums give women financial security needed to plan and the cash to afford things like clothes for the family, health care, transportation and educating their kids.
- 65% of Burkina Faso workers make less than $1/day whereas the women producing fair trade shea butter products make $3.50/day.
- Non-fair trade, non-organic shea butter is made with chemicals that greatly reduce its benefits.
- Fair trade makes shea butter, and therefore shea trees, more valuable. People, therefore, protect the trees.
One thing that Abou said that I really didn’t expect was that he does most of the UGPPK’s marketing…over the Internet. He uses the UGPPK website and targets small companies that have expressed support for fair trade.
It may take a village to raise a child – but one laptop can help raise a village….
Abou
Mariane
Lalayssa, Souleymane and Fatoumata
