Beeyo Maal’s influence in the region.

My name is Saynab Faarax.  

I am the Chairwoman of Togdheer Women Sorters Burco.  I was invited to and attended the Beeyo Maal Annual Conference in Erigavo Sanaag on Thursday 21st October 2023.  This was the first conference I attended in my life, and it tremendously inspired me.  It was empowering to see so many women working together to deliver the conference.  

It’s not new to me to see so many women working together. I have been a sorter for more than ten years and sorting is a job in which so many women are working together. What was new to me is that the women were doing a job so different from sorting during this event… 

They were in charge and not taking orders from foremen or middlemen.  

Role models

They had their best clothes and were not wearing ‘calaawiyad’ the ragged clothes women wear when cleaning and sorting resins and they were not in a dusty warehouse but in a well set up conference hall.  They were confident and took their role very seriously.  They took the best seats and positions while the men were happily seated at the back of the conference hall.  The women had the microphone and spoke first then gave the men their turn to have their say.  

A supportive community

It was uplifting to see the men fully supportive and genuinely embrace the women for the well organised conference and uniting their harvesting community.  It was empowering that the women took the initiative to lead the conference and gave the men an equal role to speak of their concerns and challenges and have their say.  It’s usually the opposite when men are running the show.  I left the conference a completely different person with my head full of ideas and enthusiasm.  

A day that changed my life

My journey to the conference began in Burco Togdheer.  I left my house early in the morning of Wednesday 20th December and took the bus to Erigavo, a six-hour journey.  I stayed at a friend’s house overnight and attended the conference the next morning.  My nerves kicked in as soon as I left Burco and throughout my journey I was thinking of what to say at the conference or how to hold myself.  I was terrified not knowing what was expected of me at the conference, what to say, how to stand in front of so many people.  

My journey back to Burco was very different and my head was busy arranging the ideas I have taken from the conference, what I would do with them and how I would implement them to benefit and develop my community of sorters and harvesters and share my experience with Togdheer Women Sorters.

United against exploitation

Togdheer Women Sorters is a self-help group based in Burco Somaliland.  We are a large group of women with more than 500 members.  We are the women working from doTERRA’s warehouses in Burco sorting the huge amounts of resins going to doTERRA.  We cleaned and sorted tons and tons of resins.  While doTERRA collected the huge profit from our back breaking work we were paid thirty dollars a month.  doTERRA lied about us in their publications claiming that they were paying us fair wages of $300 – $500 a month.  

Emily Wright said in one of her doTERRA’s promotion videos that ‘she gave us the seed of hope’.  She was well aware of the appalling conditions we were working to and how badly we were being exploited by her company. Many of our women sustained injuries, some serious due to the serious breach of health and safety at the warehouses.   

DoTERRA investigation results in more damage

We have recently participated in an investigation launched by doTERRA and led by Sidley Austin team.  Seventeen women from Togdheer Women Sorters participated in the investigation and took part in the interviews, some of which leaked even though we were promised that our interviews were confidential.  

The fact the interviews leaked put us at a greater risk.  

We provided all the evidence needed from our side including financial documents showing wages which doTERRA failed to provide.  In December 2023, we learnt that the investigation found many faults in doTERRA’s practices and doTERRA failed to deliver their corporate responsibility and lied in their marketing and communications.

Our rights, our demands

doTERRA removed some of the false claims, but not all of them and we are still demanding they remove all of them, and pay full overdue wages to the women.

• We requested that doTERRA remove all false claims and promotions from the Internet and pay all women sorters their full wages from day one of working in their warehouses.  
• We also requested doTERRA to provide protection for women that interviews leaked and facing threats.   

doTERRA has not so far responded to our request of paying the women their wages and providing them protection.  We are a united group of women and uniting our community.  

We are working very closely with Beeyo Maal Cooperative and we are very soon registering our Cooperative.

Beeyo Maal creates offsprings

The experience and ideas that I have taken from the conference will shape our women sorters, our community and create new ways of working with the harvesting community:

• Establish a learning centre for Togdheer Women Sorters in Burco.
• Build the confidence of women sorters to speak up and speak for their harvesting community. 
• Make sorting a modern and fund job by providing women necessary equipment/tools, protective uniform, and safe working environment.
• Teach women new skills in IT, reading, writing, maths, photography.
• Work with volunteer students from Burco University to work with us to teach new skills.
• Build a distillery to produce frankincense and myrrh oil and to teach our harvesting community new skills while at the same time producing quality oil of great value and price.

We felt the pain and punishment of exploitation and we want to combat exploitative companies like doTERRA and reveal their lies.  

We want the world to stand with us to bring such companies to justice – starting with demanding answers. Every worker, customer and business partner deserves answers and actions.