Shea Yeleen is a social enterprise that includes a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

and a commercial entity that sells "high-quality, unrefined

shea butter Shea butter (, , or ; ) is a fat extracted from yellow the nut of the African shea tree (''Vitellaria paradoxa''). It is ivory in color when raw and commonly dyed yellow with borututu root or palm oil. It is widely used in cosmetics as a moi ...

products." The mission of the organization is "to promote

sustainable economic development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The desir ...

in rural

sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...

, empower and train women-owned shea butter cooperatives, and educate consumers in the U.S. about natural beauty care products and

fair trade Fair trade is an arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. The fair trade movement combines the payment of higher prices to exporters with improved social and enviro ...

. Rahama Wright, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, founded Shea Yeleen in 2005 and serves as the organization's President and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Founding

Wright, a first-generation

Ghanaian American Ghanaian Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of full or partial Ghanaian ancestry or Ghanaian immigrants who became naturalized citizen of the United States. History Early history The first people to arrive from the region then known ...

, first discovered shea butter production while an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2002. Later that year, Wright became a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, where she "supported the creation of the first shea butter cooperative in the village of Dio." Through her experiences in these countries, Wright made two key observations that would inspire her work. First, she saw that "women could not take basic steps to improve their families’ health and nutrition because they lack independent income." Second, she noted that "women in Mali and more than a dozen African countries are key players in the production of shea butter — and that shea butter is a cosmetic hit in developed countries." In 2005, Wright applied these lessons to found Shea Yeleen, which has worked with women in cooperatives in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali. In March 2012, Shea Yeleen launched a for-profit

LLC A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...

to market and sell their fair trade shea butter beauty care line.

Business model and products

Shea Yeleen "promotes empowerment among women in rural West Africa by teaching them sustainable economic development through organizing and training women-owned cooperatives to produce, market, and sell high quality shea butter themselves." Shea Yeleen also works to ensure "that the profits from their products go back to the female-owned cooperatives that are cultivating and developing the products." Shea butter products sold by Shea Yeleen include body butter, black soap, body balms,

lip balm Lip balm or lip salve is a wax-like substance applied topically to the lips to moisturize and relieve chapped or dry lips, angular cheilitis, stomatitis, or cold sores. Lip balm often contains beeswax or carnauba wax, camphor, cetyl alcohol, lan ...

s and handmade soaps. Shea Yeleen is a member of the Fair Trade Federation and YouthTrade.

Accolades

For her work at Shea Yeleen, Wright was one of only 80 women selected among more than 3,000 female applicants for the "'' O''-White House Leadership Project" contest in 2008. In 2011, Shea Yeleen was selected to represent the Peace Corps theme at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the

National Mall The National Mall is a Landscape architecture, landscaped park near the Downtown, Washington, D.C., downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institut ...

in Washington, D.C.

References

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External links

Shea Yeleen Website
2005 establishments in the United States Cosmetics companies of the United States Social enterprises 501(c)(3) organizations Fair trade organizations Shea butter production