Fairest of the months!
Ripe summer’s queen
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear.

-R. Combe Miller

The small village of Nova Esperanca sits on a red-dirt cliff on the banks of the Gregorio River in the Western edge of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. The village is splashed with vivid red-orange hues of urukum pigment painted on radiant faces and bodies. This is the home of the Yawanawa tribe. Its members are the custodians of the precious urukum trees. The Yawanawa have cared for the seemingly endless miles of this rainforest that nurture these urukum trees and they have struggled to keep it their own.

In 1992, Aveda founder, Horst Rechelbacher and anthropologist May Waddington started a partnership to create a urukum tree plantation that would help the Yawanawa to sustain themselves. Aveda’s research chemists discovered that the urukum pigment harvested by the Yawanawa was ideal for creating superior lip color. Aveda’s first step as partners with the Yawanawa People was to provide them with 13,000 seedlings that were planted in groves, between houses, along paths, and in the deforested areas of the community. Over the years, Aveda has helped the community build a solar energy system, a school and a dispensary to treat malaria. Aveda helped the Yawanawa gain organic certification and also develop partnerships with a pharmaceutical facility that processes their urukum. Urukum trees continue to deliver pods filled with rich, resonant color that is free from petrochemicals. From the rich Earth to Aveda’s products, uruku pigment is free from synthetic dyes and fragrances. The people of Nova Esperanca are once again the owners and artists of their signature color-from their painted fingers to Aveda’s colorful lips, giving both partners many reasons to celebrate.