Her Enduring Right to Shea

Everything about the context suggested it could not work. So we began by sitting with women, understanding their existing systems and realities , and investing in the formalization of cooperatives where none had existed. We channelled resources into basic infrastructure, into training, and into building trust at the first mile.

From manual tracking led by local teams, to premium payments and reinvestment programs that returned value directly to source . Over time, what was viewed as an experiment became the architecture of resilience: a model that placed women not at the margins, but at the center of our trade.

For us , If our approach was to be successful , it had to begin with HER - with her knowledge, her dignity, and her ownership. Nearly two decades later, this model continues to define our work, proving that sustainability is not built in boardrooms or export warehouses, but at the source, with the women who are the access point.