Wulugu women Co-operative:Shea Butter project, North Ghana

This is our main group of Shea butter producers. These photos were taken on a recent development visit we carried out in the region in February 2008.

This group of producers are made up of different family groups who produce shea butter for us on a regular basis. At the moment, the whole production process is done manually, this makes it very difficult for our producers to produce a large amount which will help them to compete with industrial producers. Our aim this year is to raise funds to help them in the purchase of a shea butter processing machine. Having a processing machine will go a long way into making them economically self sufficient, which means that more of the children will be able to go to school. In order to do that , we have done a documentary on the whole shea butter processing method that they use. This will be sold as a DVD, the proceeds of which will go towards buying the machine.

Sisters of the Poor and the Needy orphanage, Owerri, Nigeria

In this day and age, you would assume that getting pregnant at a young age and outside the bounds of marriage should not mean the end of the world. Well, for many young women in Nigeria, it means exactly that. In majority of the cases, the family of the young woman throws her out of the family home for bringing shame to the family. In other cases, these young girls try to abort the unborn babies at unlicensed premises often with horrible consequences.

This religious congregation of the Sisters of the needy have for many years been providing refuge for these pregnant young girls. They often have at any one time about 50-80 young girls at various stages of pregnancy, some of them very very young. They are looked after till the birth of the babies and thereafter, the sister try to reconcile the families together. During their stay in the convent, the young girls are taught different skills and crafts which will help them in the future. If the reconciliation does not go according to plan, the children are often put up for adoption. The success of this project rests entirely on donations from the public

Sheabynature is very proud to be a sponsor of this very worthy project and we hope to raise some money for their work this year. If you are interested in finding out how you can help, please get in touch with us.