Tag Archives: Fair Trade Chocolate

Let the Next Round of Giving for Good Begin!

As Valentine’s Day creeps closer, lovers, couples, friends, and spouses begin searching for the perfect gift to convey how much they care for their significant other.  My advice for the gentlemen, or other jewelry-seeker, is to think out of the box, and possibly out of the jewelry store.

Gold has become the most profitable mineral for armed groups operating in the Congo.  The violence in the Congo has taken more lives than World World II – over 50 million – and has officially made the Congo the most unsafe place in the world to be a woman.  Since the SEC has yet to come up with a way to determine what gold is “conflict gold”, the only way to be sure you are not supporting armed militias in the Congo is simply to not buy any gold. And since chocolate is produced by child slaves, anyone looking to spend their dollars justly and not give their loved one a potentially blood-stained gift would appear to be at a loss.

Fortunately, for those seeking to promote love in all aspects of their gift-giving, there are some wonderful options.   My favorite choice is the Given “With All My Heart” gift set.  30% of the proceeds from the purchase go to World Vision programs that benefit women and girls around the world.  The gift set includes a cotton/polyester blend tagless shirt in the comfortable burnout style, with a beautiful heart design on the front.

The set also comes with a Tagua Nut heart necklace.  Tagua Nuts are known as the ‘vegetable Ivory” because of their ivory-like color and texture.  The Tagua Nuts used for making these necklaces were harvested in Ecuador through an economic incentive program designed to promote sustainable harvesting.  The villagers harvest the Nuts from the forest floor and then they are dyed red using vegetable dyes.

The set comes in a red gift box with a gift card that shares the same heart design as the shirt, and contains a quote from World Vision president Rich Stearns, “In my opinion, the single most important thing that can be done to cure extreme poverty is this:  protect, educate, and nurture girls and women, and provide them with equal rights and opportunities – educationally, economically, and socially.”  Each item in the gift set is available separately, and 30% of those purchases also go to World Vision’s programs from women and girls.

Ethical Ocean provides a fun list of eco-friendly and fair trade gifts for your Valentine ranging from chocolates, jewelry, and gifts for couples to enjoy together.

This Valentines Day, show your love not only for your significant other, but also for the people of the world who are less fortunate than ourselves.  Let your gift of love resonate all the way back to the people who made it.

For other gift-giving ideas, see my Christmas gift-giving guide, Give Something More Than Stuff.

Chocolate and The Child Slaves That Grow It

CNN recently posted an article on it’s human-trafficking blog, The Freedom Project, about the use of child slave labor to grow and harvest the cacao beans that are used to make chocolate.  About 75% of the world’s chocolate is grown on Africa’s Ivory Coast, where it is estimated that at least 100,000 children are working in the fields cultivating and harvesting cacao beans.  Some of them are the children of farmers, but most of them are child laborers working against their wills.  Many have been smuggled from Mali and Burkina Faso to work as slaves on cocoa plantations.

10 years ago, legislation was passed that was called the “Cocoa Protocol” that was supposed to help identify and end the use of child labor to make cocoa – like the Tiffany Protocol is supposed to do for conflict diamonds. Due to many factors, not least of which has been the civil unrest that ravaged the Ivory Coast from 2002-2004, the Cocoa Protocol has been less than successful.  Though the chocolate industry vowed 10 years ago to remove forced labor from it’s supply chain, it remains difficult to concretely verify the exact source of the chocolate and how it was grown.  And, to pay workers in Africa a fair wage, and to demand they do the same for their employees, puts a large dent in profits for everyone.  No one is too eager to go the extra mile.

The best way to be sure that the chocolate you’re enjoying didn’t cost a child his childhood, or in some cases his life, is to purchase chocolate labeled “fair trade”.  The life of this chocolate can be traced back to the farm it was grown on, and the farmer and his employees were all paid a living a wage for their work.  Fair-trade chocolate is also usually organic, so you can be sure that the farmers used environmentally-friendly and sustainable methods to grow and produce it.  Consequently, fair-trade chocolate will probably cost more and will definitely taste better than your average Hershey bar.  By voting with your dollar and choosing to purchase chocolate from companies that are dedicated to having a slavery-free supply chain, you’re signalling to the “big dogs” that you’re willing to pay more for a slavery-free product.  When they see a surge in fair-trade chocolate, you can be certain you’ll see more fair-trade Hershey bars in the grocery store.

Stop the Traffik has list of quick ways that you can help raise awareness for the cause of child labor for chocolate.  CNN also has a “Fair Trade Challenge” where they challenge readers to use fair trade chocolate in a recipe, and share it on their blog.  The best submissions will be shown on CNN International, Eatocracy, and the Freedom Project Blog.  Also feel free to share them on here – I’m always looking for a new way to eat chocolate.

Chocolate is something that is closely tied with children and one’s inner child.  It’s terrible that something so universally enjoyed should cost a child his health, his freedom, or God forbid his life.  Take a stand on behalf your inner child and children everywhere and commit to buying slavery-free chocolate.  The only guilt you should feel over eating chocolate should be from cheating on your New Year’s Resolution, not from knowing somewhere in West Africa a child, smuggled from his parents and his home, toiled in the African sun to grow it.

Check here for some fun, tasty, and slavery-free treats.