Photo: Courtesy of Hanahana Beauty Abena Boamah-Acheampong was an algebra teacher on trip to Ghana when she had a life-changing epiphany. After visiting a shea-butter cooperative called Katariga, she wondered if it would be possible to create a socially responsible, sustainable, transparent company that could support the community. And so Hanahana beauty was born.
I’ve read that one of your social-impact commitments is that you pay twice the fair-value price of shea butter from your cooperative. So now we have built this genuine relationship with the cooperative, going on for three years. We are a growing company. We are keeping the commitment. If they have issues, we try to come up with access to different solutions, such as health care. I come from an education and therapy background, so a focus on that was especially important. These people are giving us their raw materials, so they should have health care, if we can offer it, because we are benefiting from their work.
This time last year, I was doing this all by myself and had two interns in a small three-bedroom apartment. Now I have a loft space, a full fulfillment team, and we do everything in-house. Our business has been affected in a positive way. At the same time, this business is run by Black women. We have had to endure a lot and grow up in a whole different way outside of what is happening. There’s multiple pandemics we are fighting. It’s been interesting.