What is a Community Project?
A community project is where a village or group of people depend for their livelihood on one or several crops. To maximise this they pool their resources, skills and knowledge for the benefit of the whole community.
Organic at Heart supports a number of community projects in a variety of countries as diverse as Bulgaria, Ghana, Madagascar, Nepal, South Africa, Italy, India, and Somalia amongst others. Working closely with the local farmers and producers through our colleagues on the ground, these communities are offered financial support as well as managing their exports. They are all experts in their respective fields and lack only the opportunity and resources to market their excellent products to the outside world.
These are just a few of the projects we help to support through the buying of raw materials that go into making Organic at Heart products.
Rose Growing in Bulgaria
Under the communist regime in Bulgaria, land was confiscated from farmers and growers and left to become overgrown. This land was eventually returned to the rightful owners about 10 years ago.
Our suppliers are working in partnership with a Rose grower whose company, Nara Geo, produces exclusively for them. We are proud to offer an exclusive 'Premier Cru' Rose Otto Oil from a single source. The photograph on the right shows three generations of the Nikolaev family.
Shea Butter project in Ghana
We are very proud to be involved with this Shea Butter project. Georgina Koomson started this project and organised several hundred women into a community project that has a capacity of over 100 tonnes of Shea Butter production of the highest quality.
All the Shea Butter is delivered in beautiful hand woven baskets, the making of which supports several dozen more families. Their Shea Butter has obtained NOP Organic and EU certification.
Several other indigenous products are also being explored. The photograph on the right shows some of the women weaving baskets which they will use to transport the Shea Butter after the production process.
Organic Frankincense and Myrrh
In this dry arid environment it is difficult to imagine being able to eke out a living. However, in the very thorny boswellia trees, the local nomadic people collect frankincense gum. They then steam-distil this to produce Frankincense essential oil.
Our suppliers work with nomadic people to help them attain organic status for their oil. They have now achieved their goal and we are using their organically certified Frankincense oil in Organic at Heart products.
