Our Cooperative
The Sissala Shea Cooperative was founded in January 2018. It was established as an effort to organize our shea butter producers into one group to have a greater collective impact. We have over 100 women in two villages in Tumu and Kandia, and are expanding throughout the Sissala District and in Wa, the capital of the Upper West region.
This cooperative is where we reinvest 50% of our sales profit. Our reinvestment goes towards three things for our members: healthcare premiums and healthcare services, education materials for their schoolchildren, and cultivating our member's farmlands for when they need to farm during the shea offseason. We believe in the power of investing back into the source, the root, of where our product comes from because there is value in the lives of these women. They produce such a miraculous and healing product that we want to share with the world, and they deserve our investment.
Moreover, we are reinvesting into our cooperative by acquiring sustainable infrastructure for their communities. To date, we have assisted in providing access to machines to make the shea butter production process more efficient, created wells and supply the community with fresh potable water, built a building in the farm which serves as a storage and rest house, as well as build a roof for one of our prime producers.
In 2018, we visited the Sissala Vision Center, a primary school where many of the children from our cooperative attend, and we met with the parents and teachers of the children. They are highly interested in building a secondary school for their children to attend that has the same caliber of education they are accustomed. We will assist them in building this school in Tumu.
With every purchase of our product, your money directly impacts the lives of rural Ghanaian women and children.
If you would like to order in bulk and conduct direct trade with our cooperative, please email [email protected]