Bath & Body Works at the local level

Shea butter is huge here in Mali: it's used in cooking as an oil (and when most things are fried or contain lots and lots of oil, that makes for a lot of butter) , as a moisturizer, and soap, but most importantly, it's a much needed source of income for women. There's a push on the part of Peace Corps to get our village women to start making export quality butter to sell to large cosmetics companies like Bath & Body Works, etc... This requires women to change the way that they make the butter, and for this, we (the collective Peace Corps body) have staged lots and lots of trainings to teach people how to produce a higher quality, cleaner butter. A friend of mine just made a movie about the new process. Check it out on YouTube, it's called Shea: From Nuts to Butter. It's worth a watch even just to see what our villages and villagers look like, and also to hear the Bambara language.