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I met Alain at an event in Amsterdam.

When we first met, he smiled & I instantly felt connected to him.

Like the photo above.

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Something about his smile that is similar to a friendly cat.

When he delivered a presentation about his project.

I was very moved to realised that he is doing this to help people.

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'This is 10 years of my life', was his opening sentence.

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10 years helping others?

I was drawn to his story.

I can't explain it.

We had a chat after his presentation.

We shared jokes and stories. We had fun.

Alain briefly shared his stories from how he went to Ghana 10 years ago to finding his calling to serve a community.

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I was inspired.

Dear reader,

This should be no different for you.

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I was invited to his space for a conversation.

He revealed a part of his story to me.

And I am here to share it with you.

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I developed a program for professionals in Europe.

Take them to Africa and teach them about sustainability.

For a long time, when we speak of sustainability, it is about reduction in this and that, like plastic.

It is about something in the outside.

But to have a sustainable business, you have to integrate it in the primary processes.

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That was the idea, but I realised that it does not benefit the African people.

It needs to be mutually beneficial.

We cannot come here like tourists. That was not what I wanted.

I found that the needs of these people are so primary and basic.

Its about stability in terms of food on the table.

A decent income and healthy social interaction in the community is under pressure because they don't have food on the table.

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Pressure, which creates distance between people.

Where I grew up, most relationships are transactional.

And often the question is what's in it for me.

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The tradition of sharing is hard to find.

And is also going to extinction in Africa.

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So I started to learn and understand these people in Africa.

What are their needs?

And from one thing came another.

Instead of teaching others in the program, we ended up...

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Doing it ourselves 🔥

I was invited to tour the country.

Seen important people like the VP of Ghana.

But what touched me the most.

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Was the strength of a woman community that lives with few resources 💪🏼

In Western Africa, shea butter is part of their tradition.

It comes from the shea tree which can grow to 300 years old.

In 15 years it starts getting its first fruits.

The leaves are medicinal and the fruits are nutritious.

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The shea tree carries an important position in the tradition of this community 🌳

A mother teaches her daughter how to extract the oil from the pit of the shea nuts.

It provides food on the table because they cook with it and it's more healthy than coconut butter

It's a very nutritious foods and it has amazing qualities for skincare.

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That is how women in West Africa pass this tradition from mother to daughter for thousands of years 👩👧

Several reasons to start working with this women community.

First.

Shea is a very popular product for international trade.

Its being used in cosmetic creams and plant-based foods.

It's about 3 billion US dollars every year.

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Second.

It is how the women express themselves in their community.

We want to do this because it brings us not only money or food.

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It also brings a woman dignity because it's part of their tradition.

A woman who is making shea butter is also providing her family.

I've been active in gender equality in national politics in the Netherlands and..

It made sense for many different ways reasons to do this.

If I were to start any program, the community here must not only be benefit from it.

It must also have some stability as a container to receive the people.

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Let's take step one.

We find international traders who want to buy the shea butter that the women are making.

But then we realised.

It's not good enough.

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So we took step two.

We organised the women better.

All women makes shea butter from home.

So we built them a shea butter production center

But then we realised, it was also not good enough

Because our position in the international markets was very weak.

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Then we took step three.

That's setting up a trading company ourselves...

To change the rules of the game in international trading.

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We call that gradually moving forward in a positive manner.

One step at a time.

And that inspired the name of the company, Toontibo.

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Toontibo is the local word for gradually moving forward in the positive manner.

It's one magical journey.

And for me.

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It has not been easy.

There are a lot of things I can complain about.

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It is challenging on all levels in my personal life and yet, it gives me so much gratitudes.

I am so grateful that I have been given the opportunity to at least try to do this. Thank you.

Finding somebody like Umar (my partner) and seeing how our friendship has evolved over years.

We don't take any decision separately. We do everything together.

We share everything we have and that's the basis for a success.

And then seeing other people step in.

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We started with 2 and now we have 40 people in Ghana who occasionally help us.

There are hundreds of people benefiting from what we are doing.

What is even more inspiring is that there are thousands of people speaking about us

The impact reached about 40,000 people.

They see that it's different and they speak of us.

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So we are a star in a dark night.

It's a young star that is growing into maturity.

If you drop a stone in the water, concentric waves forms and grows.

We are that stone.

And now we are creating circles that are growing.

And we are seeing that growth!

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I will be grateful if we can organise it in a way that the people can live off it.

And that includes the people in Africa, and also the people in our team here in Europe.

The way that we are working together, the way that we organise ourselves is fun.

I say fun, but you know what it is

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Everybody who is here share a common motivation to create something good.

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There are too much naive and positivity in how we are solving the problems in climate change and in Africa.

You can fly a CO2 neutral with KLM.

Shell is the leader of our sustainable energy, etc

I have the tendency then to bring in heaviness. But it's also difficult for me to find the lightness.

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We buried 16 people in the last three months 🍀

They all died in the end because they cannot pay for medicine, that can heal them.

And that's making me angry but it's making sense.

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It makes me strong because it makes me more willing to battle and struggle for my community.

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