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Baraka Shea Butter is a small Canadian/Ghanaian family-owned business located on Vancouver Island in Canada and founded by husband and wife team, Wayne Dunn (Canadian/Irish) and Gifty Serbeh-Dunn (Ghanaian/Canadian).
We have a passion for using business to create meaningful community impact and generate financial returns, while simultaneously respecting our planet and environment.
We do this by creating value chains and human connections to bring high-quality local products to global markets and industries. This supports hardworking local women to generate income and develop their communities and provides ethical and sustainable products to people, businesses and industries in North America and around the world.
Gifty was born and raised in Northern Ghana. She moved to Canada in the 1980s but always felt a strong connection to her home community in Wa. When visiting, she used to bring care packages to the women. Upon asking what she could bring them next time, the women said they wanted to work and earn income.
How could Gifty offer work to these women in Ghana when she lived on the other side of the world in Canada? After seeing shea butter grow in popularity in North America, the idea came to her.
Shea butter had been handcrafted in her home community for generations, so perhaps she could provide work for the women by selling their shea butter to the rest of the world.
This formed the beginning of Baraka Shea Butter. Gifty is also a fantastic formulator of products containing Baraka’s oils and butters and enthusiastically supports Baraka customers who reach out for help. She has her own skincare brand: Shea Butter Market.
Gifty and Wayne met in Ottawa but now reside on Vancouver Island. They have spent much of their time in Africa and Wayne is currently residing in Ghana to oversee operations.
Wayne has spent decades working worldwide, advising and teaching companies, industries, governments, and international organizations how to work effectively in the space where business meets society.
He is a former Professor of Practice in Corporate Social Responsibility at McGill University and is recognized as a global thought and practice leader in this space (for more see CSR Training Institute, a training and consulting agency he founded and ran).
He has taken this learning and experience and used it to shape the purpose, values and business model for Baraka Shea Butter.
Baraka means “thank you” in Wali, a Ghanaian language with approximately One hundred and forty thousand speakers in north-western Ghana, where we source Baraka Shea Butter. However, the word Baraka also belongs to other languages and cultures, bridging divides that exist in the world today.
At Baraka, we strive to use business to bridge divides worldwide and create a genuine community impact through:
By focusing on these goals, we generate value for the entire supply chain, from the original producers through to the end users and, of course, for our own business. If Baraka isn’t profitable, none of the rest is possible or sustainable.
We take pride in every carton of shea butter we create and in how we create it. 100% handmade by the hardworking women and families of Northern Ghana, we use age-old traditional methods passed down through generations. Our products are wholesome, nourishing, and natural – no chemicals or additives, no animal testing, no harsh industrial processes.
Just pure, natural, unrefined shea butter… from our hands to yours.
