Meet Sanaa Pierre: The Fifth-grader And Entrepreneur Helping Haitian Women Farmers Through Her Business, Haitea

Haitea was created to support the people of Haiti in a sustainable way. Sanaa Pierre wanted to combine her love and passion for Haiti, and fabricated something that would ameliorate the lives of local farmers in Haiti in a non-philanthropic method. She wanted a business that would support local farmers and their productions.

Sanaa Pierre is a very brilliant fifth-grader who has received invitations to join several magnet schools in the State of Florida. At a very young age, Sana found a passion for tea-making. Therefore, combining that with her fondness for her parents’ birth-country, she created Haitea.

As most people do, she began experimenting with the flavors that she likes the most including ginger, basil, and lemongrass.

Everything is grown and produced in Haiti with final packaging and shipping in the USA. Sanaa and teamwork directly with a contractor that assembles and pre-packs the tea bags in Haiti. The products are bought from women farmers. They use different plants like bazilik (basil), jinjanm (ginger), and mant (mint), dry them out, and sell to the local contractor.

As Sanaa wanted the products to be authentic and original, it took her a while to find a reliable source of women farmers and a local contractor to work within procuring the exact products.

Her business idea takes three full years to develop before it comes to the realization. It was challenging to find a local and reliable source in Haiti. From developing the business, finding the authentic tea, working on a design, choosing the right label, and many other unspecified challenges, it was a very puzzling phase. “Even to find a local producer was not easy”, stated Sanaa’s mother, Sandra.

As in all businesses, some challenges are inescapable. Nonetheless, as you work hard with faith to develop something, you will reach maturity even when all the dots are not fully in place.

Sanaa is very caring and always ready to help others the right way. Her focus is, of course, helping women grow their businesses as she partners with them for the tea production.

Sanaa and team are currently working to have the products in several places such as local markets and hotels in Haiti as well as in the U.S. Hence, they have already started selling in the U.S. through their website.

Sanaa and team hope to expand in the next five years and have a café for more tea vending in addition to selling other related products.  Currently, Haitea has the right amount of products in stock in the U.S. if you want to order now.

When you taste Haitea, “you taste Haiti in a cup”. Sana describes Haitea as a very tasteful tea, and something different. And hey, I can’t wait to taste it myself!