doTERRA: Esseterre Bulgaria

My name is Daniel, I am 16 and I’m excited to share this creation of a mini version of the Esseterre distillation facility.

Esseterre is an essential oil distillation facility in Dobrich, Bulgaria. It was built by dōTERRA in 2016 to help support the livelihoods and culture of Bulgarian Rose, Lavender, Frankincense and Melissa farmers, and to help dōTERRA ensure quality control of essential oil distillation. The facility has three different distillation buildings and a total of 37 stills. Esseterre is a growing company that directly employs more than 90 full-time staff, including engineers, accountants, logistics managers, and technical experts. It also supports hundreds of farmers who process their harvest at the facility, and can choose to sell to doTERRA if their oils meet doTERRA quality standards. In addition to providing opportunities for local farmers, doTERRA Sourcing partners engage with the doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation to focus on Social Impact initiatives that provide opportunities and tools to help families and communities lift themselves out of poverty. The doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation focuses on seven areas of impact around the world: clean water and sanitation, disaster relief, empowering women, global health, self-reliance, supporting children, and anti human trafficking.

I first heard of LEGO Ideas years ago, and have wanted to make a set ever since. I’m now old enough to enter, and liked the idea of designing something around one of dōTERRA's Healing Hands or Co-Impact projects. Originally, I was going to make a 3-in-1 set focused on different doTERRA projects around the world. However, the scope of that was too much for the limit of LEGO pieces available, so I built Esseterre as a single piece to highlight the facility and an organization that seeks to make a positive impact in the world, and at the local level.

When I built this set, I had two things in mind:

1. I wanted the set to appeal to a wide audience. This includes special pieces, new none obscure part colors, and playability with a working tele-handler and accessible basement. It is my hope that this is a set that would bring joy to customers.

2. I wanted to raise awareness to issues that are in our world today—issues, which I believe are being neglected: Awareness about human trafficking, unfair/unethical working conditions and trade practices, and how we can be a positive change and help to make our world a better place.

Here is the FILE (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ea2fz4yVH6UgG7v7TmwVSs8ui3wts7_W/view?usp=...) for this set it can be opened in Bricklink’s Studio.