As many of you know, I have been working with my village's shea butter association since I first started work as a volunteer in Mali. I have written about my work with the shea association multiple times on my blog (see an introduction here, and photos, and information on the training that was held in my village last year). The women that I work with come from four different rural villages, and the association meets monthly to discuss their plans for the development of the association. Through these discussions, the women and I have worked together to determine the best way for Peace Corps to help them advance as an association.
I am currently looking to fund a project to both train my village's shea association members in the production of shea butter soap and lotion and to increase their capacity for the production shea butter. This project will fund a 3 day training on how to make soap and lotion using shea butter as a base, products that can be sold at the local level. In addition, the project will help to fund the purchase of different shea butter processing materials (cauldrons, storage and transport containers, buckets, etc.) which will allow the women of the association to increase the amount of shea butter they produce each year.
If you are interested in helping to fund this project, you can make donations at the Peace Corps website here. Any contribution that you can make, no matter how large or small, would be welcome and incredibly helpful to the women that I work with on a daily basis in my village. Thank you in advance!
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Hi Ali, i ni ce!
ReplyDeleteFound your site while searching for Mali blogs and glad I did. Donated to your project as it sounds like a worthy venture. Bonne chance a toi.
So awesome that you are friends with Ibrahim, Assigue and Bill. I assume you met them at sleeping camel? They are good friends of mine as well.
I was wondering if you could do me a favor? Could you possibly track down the email of a third year peace corps volunteer named Amber who works with Project Muso in Bamako? You may not know her personally, but maybe if you reach out the PC network you could find out?
The reason I ask is because I am running a project called "How to Draw Camels" (howtodrawcamels.com). My mission is to teach the world how to draw camels and to showcase social enterprises in West Africa. The drawing camels bit is sort of an absurd and fun way to get people's attention. Anyways, I am planning on featuring Project Muso, and it would be helpful if I could get in contact with Amber as I met her before, albeit only one time.
I would also be interested in featuring the work you are doing with the women in your village. I am coming to Mali in May.
Projects I'm trying to feature: things that are sustainable, innovative, and entrepreneurial or all three.
Ok this comment is getting out of hand, so I will stop. You are probably sweating your ass off reading this. Hot season in Mali is no joke. Respond here or email me at phil.paoletta@gmail.com regarding anything I mentioned.
k'an ben,
Phil