Sisters in Ghana gain self-sufficiency with juice- and water-bottling operation

The Jubilee Primary and Junior High School in Kumasi found themselves faced with an increasingly common problem: Their students were getting fat from guzzling sugary sodas. The St. Louis Sisters who run the school wanted to find a healthier alternative, so they decided to start selling bottles of orange juice, made from orange trees on their property.

The kids snapped it up. But the sisters were surprised when parents and people living around the school, located on a main road four hours north of the capital of Accra, started showing up on the school grounds, asking to buy the juice as well. Most bottled juices in the area sold commercially have very little fruit content and a lot of sugar added. "Natural juice?" The sisters had tapped into a new market.

"We sell out of this every day!" said Dorothy, an employee who works at the school canteen, as she balanced the empty cooler on her head and returned to the refrigerator in the convent to refill for the next day's recess. Children skipped back to class, sipping on the last bottles of the orange juice.