The Body Shop’s new brand advocate, Lily Cole, visited the producers of her beauty must-have, Shea Body Butter, in Ghana, to see the Community Fair Trade programme in action.
   What we love about the Shea Body Butter is that it absorbs into the skin easily and moisturizes very well without being too greasy. It leaves the skin feeling very conditioned and soft, which helps prevent dryness. The shea fruit scent in the body butter is refreshing and lasts throughout the day.
   Cole isn’t endorsing a product just out of commercialism. She managed to get a good sense of why the product is so special when she took part in the Shea Body Butter artisanal process in Mbanayili, the first village in Ghana to supply to the Body Shop.
   The women demonstrated to Cole from tree to tree how they gather the nuts during harvesting. Then once the nuts are collected, they take her to the centre where Lily experiences how to produce the shea butter through the eight-stage process.
   The first step is the shelling of the nut. It then needs to be dried in the sun. Once dried, the nut is cracked and the kernel is removed and broken into nibs. The nibs get roasted and cooled before they get ground to a liquid paste. Warm and cold water is alternatively added to a bowl of liquid shea. It is hand-stirred until the butter gradually floats and is scooped off. The shea butter then gets heated over a wood fire before it is filtered and scooped into a bowl to cool down. Once cooled, the shea butter is pounded by sticks to soften, preparing it for packing into 25 kg containers. When packed, the shea butter is transferred to the Body Shop factory to be sold as Body Butters.
   Cole learned the reason the Shea Body Butter is so special: the unique story behind it. She learned that the lives in the area have really been transformed, because of the Community Fair Trade programme.
   The Body Shop has also released a Strawberry Body Mist. It contains Community Fair Trade alcohol, made from sugar cane in Ecuador. The traditional farming methods help preserve the natural beauty of the area. What we love most about it is its unique, fruity scent. It’s light, fresh and natural, which gives you that summer feeling.—Christina Naidu