L’Occitane Foundation

Since 2013, L’Occitane Foundation has been supporting Sightsavers’ mission to improve health services, fight disease and promote equality.

Thanks to funding from the foundation, Sightsavers and Light for the World, a global development organisation, launched a new programme in 2025 to ensure people in remote areas of Burkina Faso have access to quality eye care.

The eye health programme in the Cascades region of the country aims to provide more than 19,000 eye examinations, at least 200 cataract operations and 500 spectacles to schoolchildren and adults. It will also train more than 400 teachers and community health volunteers to carry out eye tests.

About the Foundation

L’Occitane Foundation was created in 2006 by global beauty and skincare brand L’Occitane en Provence, to bring together and develop charity initiatives undertaken by the brand since its inception.

Burkina Faso, from where L’Occitane sources shea butter – one of the key ingredients in many of its world-renowned products – has remained one of the key areas of focus of its support.

What other Sightsavers projects has L’Occitane Foundation supported?

For more than 11 years, L’Occitane Foundation has supported Sightsavers’ work in Burkina Faso.

Thanks to the organisation’s support, we were able to work with the Ministry of Health to tackle river blindness and trachoma in one of the two regions in the country. The project provided medical training to local health care workers, hosted screening campaigns, supported operations and helped to distribute medication, all in collaboration with local communities.

The funding from the Foundation helped to reduce the number of people with river blindness and trachoma significantly. In one area of the Cascades Region, river blindness infections decreased by as much as 96 per cent, and trachoma is now on track to be eliminated as a public health problem.