These Things Take Time to Grow
From ADRA’s Cashew Trees to GoodOne
Nearly 40 years ago, ADRA began helping farmers plant cashew trees in Ghana. On a recent visit, Audrey Andersson, who serves as Vice-President for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and ADRA International Board Chair saw how some of those investments are creating new opportunities today through GoodOne, ADRA’s social venture and for-profit company.
Andersson, who also serves on the GoodOne board, traveled to Ghana with GoodOne General Manager Cherie Jackson and Chief Operating Officer Alex Balint to better understand the business and see firsthand what social enterprise can mean for farmers, workers and their communities.
“I wanted to better understand how the GoodOne business worked and the impact and potential of social enterprise, both locally but also to ADRA,” Andersson said.
What she found was a story that began long before GoodOne sold its first bag of cashews.
Building on Decades of Investment
ADRA has worked with cashew-growing communities in Ghana for decades, including helping farmers plant cashew trees. But growing a crop does not guarantee a sustainable livelihood.
Andersson learned that just four years ago, some farmers were cutting down cashew trees and selling the wood for charcoal. Cashews were being purchased at extremely low prices and exported for processing, leaving farmers with little incentive to maintain trees that were not providing sufficient income.
GoodOne is working to change that equation.
The company works with farmers to improve pruning practices, increase yields and reduce disease. According to Jackson, GoodOne also pays farmers a minimum of 10 percent premium above government prices. The cashews are processed in Ghana through a factory partner that employs more than 65 people, helping keep more jobs and economic activity within the country.
For Andersson, one of the surprises was how many women she encountered throughout the process.
“The process is labor-intensive and provides employment for women in the community,” she said. “I was surprised at the number of women farmers.”
She also saw how communities worked together. When older farmers or those physically unable to prune their own trees needed assistance, younger community members stepped in to help.
It was a reminder that the impact extended beyond the crop itself.
GoodOne pays farmers a minimum of 10 percent premium above government prices.
A Better Life At Home
Under an enormous mango tree, Andersson, Jackson and Balint met with farmers from four different communities and listened to what the opportunity had meant for their families.
Some spoke about being able to educate their children and grandchildren. One farmer had earned enough to put a more substantial roof on his home.
But one story particularly stayed with Andersson.
A farmer told the group that he had once left Ghana for Libya in search of a better life. When he heard about ADRA’s cashew-planting project, he returned home. Years later, when economic pressures again made him consider leaving in search of employment, GoodOne began creating a new market for the cashews growing in his own community.
This time, he stayed.
“Today he didn’t need to leave looking for a better life,” Andersson recalled. “He had been able to achieve it in his community.”
For Jackson, stories like his demonstrate what GoodOne is trying to accomplish through a different approach to development.
“The key difference with this social enterprise is our emphasis on partnership through trade versus just being another development project or charity,” she said.
“We are selling a business solution to poverty. We are partnering with our customers to facilitate a living wage for our farmers, to give them agency and choices.”
Partnership Through Trade
That relationship between development and business is central to how ADRA and GoodOne work together.
For decades, ADRA invested in Ghana’s cashew sector, helping establish and strengthen production. But according to Balint, traditional value chains meant many farmers were still receiving only a small share of the value generated by the crops they grew.
“GoodOne is the social enterprise of ADRA, a ‘market maker’ and ‘honest broker’ for our farmers,” Balint said.
He describes the approach connecting ADRA and GoodOne as trade-based development, using trade intentionally to create more inclusive economic growth.
“We are intentional about using trade as a lever for inclusive growth and prosperity creation,” Balint said. “By adding value locally, integrating producers into regional and global value chains, and ensuring farmers and local processors capture more of the margins, trade-based development builds lasting prosperity and resilience.”
In practice, that means looking beyond how much a farmer can produce to consider the entire journey of a product, including who processes it, who buys it, where it is sold and how the economic value is distributed along the way.
The roles of ADRA and GoodOne are distinct but connected. GoodOne works within the marketplace, building demand and relationships with buyers while advocating for farmers and processors. ADRA’s development work can help strengthen the communities and agricultural systems that make participation in those markets possible.
Balint said the results are already becoming visible.
“We have seen how this model is already lifting pricing in Ghana, our farmers earning more at the farm gates, reinvesting in their farms, sending their children to school, and overall, this scheme is creating more local jobs,” he said.
For Andersson, that builds on the foundation created through ADRA’s earlier work.
“Social enterprise leveraged the good that ADRA did in planting the cashew trees and is taking it to the next level,” she said.
A Business Built for Impact
For GoodOne to deliver that impact, however, it also has to succeed as a business.
Cashews are a commodity, and Jackson knows GoodOne must compete for customers like any other consumer brand. That has meant focusing not only on its mission, but also on creating a product people genuinely want to buy.
Recently, GoodOne introduced new packaging designed to better communicate the freshness and quality of the cashews while standing out on shelves and online.
But there was another audience Jackson had in mind.
“I wanted the women in Ghana to feel proud of their brand,” she said. “The majority of farmers and factory workers we work with are women. I think the pack is a more elevated representation of them. Ghana is colorful and vibrant. This pack communicates that more effectively.”
The goal is to build a successful business precisely because the business itself becomes part of the mechanism for creating greater economic opportunity.
For Andersson, GoodOne also raises a larger question about the future of humanitarian and development work.
“At a time when the sources of funding are in flux, social enterprise offers a way forward, forming partnerships between communities and business, leveraging first steps made by humanitarian projects,” Andersson said.
Photo: Left to right – Pr. Solomon Kwadwo Osei, Exec. Sec. of Mid Ghana Union Conference, Pr. Jonathan Owusu, President of Mid Ghana Union Conference, Audrey Andersson, GC Vice President and ADRA International Board Chair, & Anita Asiedu, Treasurer of Mid Ghana Union Conference.
Bringing the Story Into Adventist Schools
That model is now creating opportunities to connect consumers in North America more directly with the communities behind the product.
Working with Sharon Aka, ADRA International’s Director of Adventist Partnerships, and the North American Division Education Department, GoodOne has developed a fundraising program that allows schools to sell cashews while learning about the people and communities behind them.
Accompanying curriculum aligned with NAD educational standards has been developed for different age groups, making the program easier for teachers to incorporate into their classrooms.
“The schools will be fundraising anyway, but using the cashews and curriculum makes it a much deeper experience for our kids,” Jackson said. “It introduces them to the work ADRA is doing globally and helps them to understand how they can make a difference right now, today.”
Jackson calls the students who participate “tr-aid partners,” combining the concepts of trade and aid. They raise funds for their own schools while helping create demand for cashews grown and processed in Ghana.
Her dream is to see every Adventist school in the North American Division participate at least once a year. She would also like to see GoodOne cashews available throughout AdventHealth facilities.
And eventually, the idea could move beyond cashews.
“Beyond cashews, we have relationships with farmers all over the world where this concept can be replicated,” Jackson said.
Balint sees similar potential in the trade-based development model.
“This approach is replicable to other communities and countries and can work with different commodities,” he said.
The Long Work of Development
For Andersson, however, one of the most important lessons from Ghana was not necessarily about how quickly GoodOne could grow. It was about how long meaningful development can take.
The cashew trees planted through ADRA’s work decades ago created an opportunity that no one at the time could have known would eventually become GoodOne.
“Without all the work of ADRA over the past 40-plus years, planting cashew trees, we would not be able to have a social enterprise,” Andersson said.
“These things take time to grow, and sometimes we get impatient, but the difference it is making in lives and communities was wonderful to see.”
GoodOne is still a growing venture, and Andersson is clear that growth brings lessons of its own.
“As with every new venture, there are lessons to be learned, and as we apply those lessons, the enterprise grows and gets stronger.”
Nearly four decades after the first cashew trees were planted, perhaps that is the larger story Andersson brought home from Ghana.
Development does not always follow a straight line. A tree planted decades ago can become a farmer’s livelihood today. A humanitarian project can create the foundation for a business. And a bag of cashews purchased thousands of miles away can become part of a partnership that helps someone build a better life without leaving home.
To learn more about GoodOne, you can visit their website here.
Author | ADRA International
Photo Credit | ADRA Ghana
