Thanks to your purchases of OLVE’True™ Shea Organic & Fair Trade et OLVE’True™ Shea Fair Trade, you are actively contributing to the socio-economic development of local populations, by supporting collective projects with social, economic and environmental goals. These actions are financed by the Development Funds, managed independently by the farmer organizations partners of OLVEA in Burkina Faso.
Traditionally, the Shea tree is a resource protected by the producers’ good agricultural practices and the Forest Code of Burkina Faso. However, several threats weigh on Shea: bush fires, aging parkland, sanitary degradation, use of wood for domestic tasks …
In order to fight against these threats, the farmer organizations partners of OLVEA are implementing several techniques for the preservation and protection of the Shea tree.
These actions contribute to the Action for Shea parklands initiative, launched by the Global Shea Alliance in 2020 (and to which OLVEA is participating), aiming to plant 10 million Shea trees over the next 10 years.
The farmer organizations partners of OLVEA have chosen to reinforce the existing project to provide improved cookstoves to Shea producers.
Indeed, the boiling step of shea nuts on traditional cooking equipment, which is inefficient and consumes a lot of firewood, contributes to deforestation and emits harmful fumes and greenhouse gases. In addition, sourcing wood is a difficult and time-consuming activity for women.
Thus, by receiving suitable equipment and training, women producers are saving time and reducing their wood consumption by almost 50%! Beyond boiling the shea nuts, improved cookstoves are also used for daily activities, such as preparing meals.
More than 320 clean cooking equipment have been distributed, avoiding the consumption of 280 tonnes of wood and the emission of 576 tonnes of CO2, thus reducing the domestic work of producers by 32,000 hours.
In rural areas of Burkina Faso, the use of scales isn’t widespread. Therefore farmers don’t use universal weight units and commonly use local units of measure, such as a can of tomatoes (1.5 kg on average!), to estimate the weight of their production.
Equipping them with suitable weighing scales, along with a training to the unit of the kilogram, offers them total transparency and precision on weighings – and therefore, on payments. It also helps them to professionalize, and to use this tool in other activities.
Farmers’ organizations have financed the acquisition of 2 scales.
Motorcycles ease the work of technical teams within farmers’ organizations, and are thus a professional tool intended to improve their working conditions. Technical support to producers are more effective, and as a result, the quality of the agricultural production is improved.
Access to schooling can be difficult for some Burkinabé children, as schools can be several kilometers away from their home, and children do not always have adequate means of transport.
Farmers’ organizations have therefore implemented several actions to promote education in rural areas: donation of school supplies, donation of 17 bicycles (making it easier to go to school), support for the education of 600 underprivileged children, rehabilitation of 3 classrooms (roofing, painting…) and equipment of 5 classrooms (solar kits, donation of 50 tables et benches), thus enabling several children to go to school in decent conditions.
Access to drinking water is a real issue in Burkina Faso, especially in rural areas. Villagers sometimes have to travel several kilometers to get to a water point; it is traditionally a woman’s task.
Building wells and water drillings makes it possible to ease access to drinking water for an entire village, and allows correct sanitary conditions, which is crucial for a healthy and prosperous living environment.
The farmer organizations partners of OLVEA funded the construction of 7 water drillings and the and the rehabilitation of 10 more, enabling more than 5,000 people to access this vital resource.
Warehouses allow the storage in good conditions of agricultural foodstuffs before their sale; It is therefore a real opportunity of economic development for a village. In addition, these covered rooms are actively contributing to the village’s life as a place for meetings or one-off events.
Usually, people are storing their agricultural products individually in traditional granaries. Warehouses make it possible to store larger quantities without deteriorating quality, to make group sales, and to access new sources of income.
32 storage warehouses have been built in rural villages.
Health centers are usually a few kilometers away, which makes it harder to get access to health care; it is indeed not uncommon to have drug shortages or understaffing.
This project has enabled the rehabilitation of 4 health centers, the equipment of 29 centers with suitable equipment, and the building of 3 new waiting areas to avoid women and children from queuing outside, exposed to sun or bad weather. More than 450 women benefited from medical care and disease screenings for infections such as hepatitis and cervical cancer.