The second project that some of the students have offered to help is Linda Atibilla's Shea Butter Enterprise.

Project overview:

Supporting the establishment and development of a Shea-butter social enterprise in northern rural Ghana; building the capacity of a young and talented local female leader, and empowering 12 women from a disadvantaged community to run their business, generate income, and become strong role models for young girls and prevent migration to the South.

Background

Linda Atibilla is a recently graduated student from the University for Development Studies, Ghana. She grew up in Binaba, a poor community in Bawku West in the Upper East Region of Ghana, and is currently living in Zebilla working for Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC).

Linda is an aspiring youth leader, who was in her final year at university when she saw an African Women's Development Fund competition in a national newspaper. The task was to write an essay about women's empowerment so she wrote about women in politics in Ghana, and their role in decision making. The essay impressed the judges and she was chosen alongside two others to win an award, and was given an award of $5,000 from the Hawa Yakubu Legacy fund. This fund seeks to encourage young women to take up leadership mantle to mentor their fellow peers in their various communities.

$2,500 was to be used as a bursary for her education, which allowed her to attend University and complete her Bachelors degree. The remaining $2,500 was to be spent on setting up a project to benefit women in the community. Linda had always aspired to set up her own charity or social enterprise and so decided to do so in the community where she grew up.

Issues facing Binaba Community

Due to the high poverty levels in Binaba, the community faces many issues. There are high levels of teenage pregnancy, large numbers of school drop outs, low enrolment of girls in school, and large numbers of young people migrating down south to look for work. Young people's aspirations are low and poverty levels are high. Many travel to Kumasi / Accra (cities in the south) to attempt to earn money for education or for their families. However, the girls are vulnerable and are at risk of homelessness, falling into prostitution, teenage pregnancy and HIV and AIDS.

Project concept

The brain behind the Shea butter project is to engage young ladies within the age group of 18-25 in the business to get a reliable source of market and a regular source of income for their livelihood. The project was conceptualized to discourage female migration in Binaba in the Bawku West District.

The project is necessary because in the community, women are the bread winners of most families and work to ensure its sustenance, thus with the project in place, women will have a regular source of income to cater for their needs.

The project idea was assessed through a SWOT analysis, and from a number of different project ideas came out as the one with the most potential to succeed and be sustainable.

Objectives

The specific objectives of the proposed project include:

· To equip women financially for the family sustenance and also participate in leadership process

· To create a regular source of income for the women

· To discourage female migration to the Southern sector

· To open the community up for investment

· To support women who are willing to lead in their campaign

"I foresee that with the sustainability of the project, jobs will be available to young women in the community to help reduce the poverty level in the community to enable them participate in leadership process since women are bread winners of most Northern families."

Current activities:

"I currently have twelve women at the processing centre. We operate manually: we use the commercial grinding mill (in the community, not our own) for the milling of our raw materials. We have started processing the shea-butter notwithstanding the numerous challenges we face currently."

The product:

Shea-butter is processed from the nut of the African Shea tree. It is used in food preparation, as well as in cosmetics. It has a diverse range of uses, from cooking oil to soap and candle wax to body moisturiser. We currently prepare it as plain shea-butter but want to diversify it into creams, soaps and lotions.

The product made at the centre is quality Shea butter. It is sold at the local market and based on requests is sent to some buyers in other areas of the district. However, our goal is to sell the product to a broad local, national and international market.

The students will help Linda with her business plan and marketing, her leadership skills, and fundraising, and will hopefully use their business brains to think of creative ways to help Linda make her enterprise a successful one. I will pop updates on my blog every now and again to let you know how they are getting on. Watch this space :).

With love from Ghana,

Em Xx