Every time you purchase a doTERRA Essential Oil, you make an impact across the globe. Co-Impact Sourcing is model of sourcing the best, while helping the most. No other essential oil company operates under this model. You get to be part of the Co-Impact Sourcing model and a conscious consumer when you purchase essential oils from doTERRA.
What are the origins of Co-Impact Sourcing?
“We founded dōTERRA with the bold commitment to sell only 100% pure essential oils. As we rapidly expanded, traditional suppliers told us that there was no way to maintain our growth curve without resorting to extended or adulterated oils. But we strictly refused to compromise our quality. Instead, we began sourcing essential oils directly. We set up long-term relationships with farmers and distillers and created our Global Botanical Network of sourcing partners. More than half of the essential oils we source come from aromatic plants that grow best in developing countries, among them some of the least developed regions in the world. When we witnessed the dire needs of these communities, we knew we had to create a model that would actively support our partners. To ensure that farmers and harvesters are treated ethically, dōTERRA introduced Co-Impact Sourcing. This sourcing model aims to create a positive impact for everyone along the supply chain by increasing economic mobility and financial security and building long-term, mutually beneficial supplier partnerships. Co-Impact Sourcing creates shared value for all stakeholders in the supply chain by being at the source and intentionally implementing environmental stewardship and social impact initiatives. Co-Impact Sourcing certainly is not the easy way, but it is the right way”
Sourcing Map
doTERRA Measures Impact in 4 Ways
- Communities Served
- People Empowered
- Progress Made
- Lives Improved
Sourcing Guiding Principles
- Generating Jobs – Reducing poverty by creating and sustaining jobs.
- Fair, On-Time Payments – Consistent, fair payments to producers, including prepayments.
- Building Supplier Capacity – Supporting farmers, producers, and distillers through training and financial support.
- Sustaining Long-Term Partnerships – Multi-year contracts with growers and distillers based on solidarity and respect.
Co-Impact Principles
- Fair Labor Conditions – Healthy and safe working environments free from harassment and discrimination.
- Promoting Co-Ops – Respect the right for all employees and producers to join and form cooperatives.
- Environment Stewardship – Promote energy efficient technologies, renewable energy, and waste minimization.
- Facilitating Community Development – The doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation helps support community development projects in sourcing communities such as schools, health clinics, training facilities and clean water systems.
At the Source
doTERRA spends a lot of time, effort, and resources to be at the source of their essential oils and work closely with partner farmers and distillers. By removing middlemen and working directly with suppliers who are aligned with the values of doTERRA, they fulfill their promise to source the best and help the most.
Companies that are disconnected from the source can fail in two ways.
- It’s impossible for them to ensure the highest standard of quality for essential oils. This is typically how and where adulteration occurs.
- Because of a disconnected supply chain, they do not know the people, or the communities involved and therefore can’t ensure that they are making a positive impact.
Social Impact
doTERRA’s social impact initiatives focus on:
- Building up small farmers and their communities
- Supporting farming cooperatives
- Empowering women
They do this by creating ethically responsible employment opportunities and both creating and sustaining jobs in rural and underserved areas.
doTERRA remains committed to:
- Job creation and training
- Fair and on-time payments
- Increased reliability in pricing and long-term contracts
- Expanded access to the market
- Fair labor conditions and wages for both women and men
They even go a step further to increase transparency by expecting partners to keep accurate records of hours worked, tracking payments, and making sure a majority of jobs are held by local community members. doTERRA looks for ways to address the cycle of poverty to create long-term, systemic change.
Environmental Stewardship
Sustainable farming practices allow doTERRA to focus on providing the purest essential oils, while also doing all they can to ensure the use of natural resources are equitable and ecologically sustainable. Through their at-the-source model, they can ensure no toxic chemicals are being used that could harm the environment, farmers, and harvesters or contaminate food and water sources. doTERRA continuously looks for opportunities to utilize renewable energy in the entire supply chain, minimize water usage, reduce their environmental footprint throughout all operations, and track their sustainable impact over time.
2021 Annual Impact Report Highlights
In 2021 doTERRA:
Expanded Our Global Family
- Opened new markets in Thailand and Israel.
- Shipped to millions of customers in 134 countries.
- Achieved recognition as the largest essential oil company in the world from Verify Markets.
Empowered People in Under-Served Regions
- Supported 463,025 jobs worldwide, with nearly 3 million lives improved in sourcing communities.
- Intentionally, sustainably sourced essential oils in 47 countries.
- Donated $2.3 million to improve the health, safety, and self-reliance of the people in sourcing communities.
Increased Supply Chain Transparency
- Launched a 10-year plan to audit their 270+ supply chains.
- Implemented a new measurement methodology to evaluate suppliers’ adherence to the Sourcing Guiding Principles.
- Audited 14% of their supply chains in the first year – 92% of which achieved silver and gold status.
Improved Lives and Reduced Human Suffering
- Donated $14,500,000 to global humanitarian projects.
- Increased charitable donations 14.6%.
- Provided relief to 601,750 individuals impacted by Covid-19.
- Matched Wellness Advocate fundraising for 117 projects.
Galvanized Long-Term Commitment to End Human Trafficking
- Launched Hope – a comprehensive action plan to fight human trafficking and victimization.
- Donated over $1 million to fight human trafficking worldwide.
- Supported programs to prevent trafficking, rescue victims, and restore dignity for survivors.
Saved Lives By Offering Access to Healthcare in Rural Somaliland
- Opened the Sanaag Specialty Hospital providing healthcare access to 600,000 people.
- Raised 2.5 million to fund hospital operations for five years.
- Supported an endowment fund to provide medical staff salaries in perpetuity.
Made Progress in Sustainability Agenda
- Overhauled shipping processes to reduce energy consumption and shipping material volume.
- Replaced plastic shipping materials with paper, saving 283,000 lbs of plastic per year.
- Switched to carbon-efficient ocean shipments whenever possible.
Prioritized Environmental Conservation
- Continued working to protect and restore native forests in Hawaii, which is the largest reforestation effort in the state’s history.
- Received a 2021 SEAL Environmental Initiative Award.
- Supported conservation and land management educational programing for Hawaiian students.
Advanced Scientific Research
- Launched a multiyear, cutting-edge essential oil research project to demonstrate the superiority of doTERRA essential oils and validate use in clinical settings.
My Personal Co-Impact Trip Story
I had an opportunity to be part of a Co-Impact Sourcing trip with doTERRA; our trip was to Nepal. We worked with the growers of the Wintergreen, and we sat with them and learned what a difference doTERRA had made in their lives and in their communities. It’s an extremely poor community and many of them did not have sustainable living wages.
I saw poverty in a way that I couldn’t even imagine before going to Nepal. There were people living on the side of the road with no shelter, no running water, no safe water to drink, and no shoes. Once we got to the village where doTERRA had been partnering with, the people were incredibly grateful, in tears thanking us for what we were doing for them. As a company we’ve taught them how to sustainable source their Wintergreen, paid them more than a living wage, and paid them same day; this ensures they can support their families.
In Nepal specifically the women are the ones who do pretty much all the work. They support the family financially and they make the food and clean. These women go and harvest the wintergreen leaves in the morning before sending their kids to school.
One of the amazing things I got to do in Nepal was assist in building a medical facility and a school. That community did not have access to healthcare, they would have to get on a bus and travel for six hours or more to reach the nearest medical facility. This meant a lot of women did not have readily available access to medical help if they experienced complications while pregnant or birthing. They also had no schools for the children in that community, so it was such an amazing opportunity to be a part of meeting those needs for them.
That experience made me so appreciative every time I open a bottle of Wintergreen or Deep Blue which has Wintergreen in it. I think about those families that are still being supported through the purchase of doTERRA’s Wintergreen essential oil and I know how grateful they are to be able support their families by doing a job they enjoy. Every bottle of doTERRA essential oil has a story like this and as a consumer of doTERRA products you get to decide where your money goes.
Hope
In 2021 doTERRA launches the Hope Action Plan to fight human trafficking and victimization from all angles.
Advocates of Hope are taking action in three ways:
- Prevent – prevent human trafficking and protect the most vulnerable among us.
- Rescue – donate to task forces, law enforcement, and trained experts to carry out responsible rescue operations.
- Restore – support trauma-informed programs and therapies to restore dignity for those who have been freed.
The Launch of the Hope Initiative
A Global Force in the Fight Against Human Trafficking
According to the Global Slavery Index, over 40 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide—predominantly in labor and sex trafficking—and the vast majority are women and children.
The doTERRA Healing Hands initiative, Hope, is leading the fight to end modern slavery. While other efforts address part of the problem or lessen the impact of human trafficking in one area, the Hope Action Plan fights trafficking from all sides to solve the problem at its core.
Hope seeks to build sustainable, long-term solutions. The action plan uses collective impact—a model that supports groups working together to solve a complicated problem, with collective efforts creating a bigger impact than they would individually. This teamwork-focused approach encourages governments, nonprofits, businesses, and citizens to combat human trafficking together.
The Hope Action Plan employs a three-pronged strategy: Prevent, Rescue, and Restore. Each of these aspects is fundamentally important to ending modern slavery and victimization.
Prevent
Human trafficking is one of the most horrific outcomes of broken societal structures. To truly end trafficking, we must address its many complicated factors. To do that, we need eyes and ears in every sector of our communities, from law enforcement and government officials to businesses and private citizens. The dōTERRA Healing Hands Foundation works with nonprofits, legislators, and businesses around the world to identify societal shortcomings and failures that make individuals vulnerable, and then develop and implement effective, sustainable solutions.
Rescue
It is difficult for a person to escape trafficking on their own. It almost always requires involving law enforcement or specially trained task forces, as well as investigations and interventions to responsibly extract someone from a trafficking situation and seek prosecution of the perpetrators.
On average, it costs five thousand dollars to rescue one person from trafficking.
Resources are needed to professionally train task forces and law enforcement on how to perform rescue operations, investigate tips, identify victims, and extract survivors safely and responsibly. But even after survivors are safely separated from traffickers, significant funding is needed to support arresting traffickers, reuniting survivors with family, and repatriating them to their home country when applicable. Because rescue operations are expensive and require extensive, intensive training, the best way Wellness Advocates and consumers can support this part of the fight against trafficking is through donations.
Restore
Freedom from traffickers is the first step on the road to recovery. Healing journeys are filled with physical, emotional, and financial obstacles. Survivors require attentive care from professionals trained to treat trauma, and they need a safe place to live during this stage of rehabilitation. This type of aftercare is called trauma-informed care.
On average, trauma-informed aftercare costs $40 per day per survivor. Costs include necessities such as nutritious food, clothing, and toiletries, as well as a clean, functional, and high-security shelter. It also includes education, vocational training, professional trauma counseling, legal advocacy, and social work for the survivor’s family and community. Multiple organizations team with doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation, including Dahlia’s Hope and Lighthouse, to make high quality aftercare more available.
Trauma-informed care is especially important to prevent survivors from being trafficked or traumatized again. Restore is an essential component of the Hope Action Plan, as it helps survivors successfully navigate life and thrive after what they experienced.
Protecting the vulnerable, fighting victimization, and restoring survivors of human slavery and sexual exploitation is a top priority for doTERRA. Over the past five years, the doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation has donated over $8.8 million in the fight against modern slavery.
How can you help?
The entire purchase price for each bottle of doTERRA Hope Touch sold is donated to the doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation to fight human trafficking and victimization. Because doTERRA covers all the overhead and administrative costs of the doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation, 100% of the purchase price goes directly to the cause.
The inspiration for this article came from doTERRA’s recent leadership retreat, where they revealed to us that their vision is to triple their impact by 2030. Everything they are currently doing and planning to do has a central focus of, “how can we empower more, how can we improve more lives, and how can we triple the impact?”
In 2021 doTERRA was able to empower 3 million people – growers, their communities, and families. By 2030 doTERRA wants that number to be over 10 million.
There are 10 oils that will have the largest impact on helping doTERRA triple their impact by 2030.
Those oils include:
In the upcoming weeks I am going to spotlight each one of the above oils. I will be diving deep into the uses of each oil, how you use it, DIY ideas, health protocols, diffuser blends, and any other information that will help you use these oils in your home so you can make a difference in your home while participating in conscious consumerism and helping doTERRA impact more lives globally.
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