Father Silvio Brosegihini knew nothing of marketing or logistics when he founded the Chankuap Foundation in 1996, but that didn’t stop him from helping the indigenous Achuar and Shuar people develop a sustainable cosmetics industry built on the oils of rare plants. Externally, the foundation began looking for ways to certify the products as organic – an effort complicated by the fact that the communities are scattered across 70 thousand hectares, and the production processes and conditions varied from region to region. With management advice from VIS, the foundation built a small processing plant and began offering uptake agreements to community farmers – essentially promising to buy any certified organic oils they produced.