Choc Pickers By James Hanley And the Fair Trade

GHANA

25 Million People

Beautiful Scenery

Small Villages

IVORY COAST

Large Cities

Beautiful Beaches

World Class Football

But somewhere amidst all of this fun and excitement…

What are these pictures you ask?

The simplest way to explain is by showing you a before and after photo

BEFORE

AFTER

These kids are bringing you your chocolate

You May Think "Ok so they choose to spend their time picking the cocoa beans for our chocolate for a pass-time after school?"

But that's just what these multi million dollar chocolate companies tell you…

Somewhere in the middle of the vast cocoa bean plantations of Ghana and the Ivory Coast hundreds of young children are put to work against their will to pick us our chocolate. These children are sent out with large, sharp machetes and poison to go and pick the pods of cocoa which will eventually be sent out for us to make our chocolate.

These kids are sent out to work all day every day against their will. These kids have no time to relax or play and no time for school. Most of the kids working on the cocoa farms are trafficked in illegally from neighbouring countries without their parents or friends and they get trafficked in to work for complete strangers. You’d think that because they work on a chocolate producing farm these kids would at least get free samples of the chocolate they are picking, but 99% of the kids working on these farms don’t even know what chocolate is!

Four Corners put out a documentary called “Chocolate: The Bitter Truth” where they went out undercover in these cocoa bean plantations to see what was really happening. “His name is Fatao. He is just 12 years old and each day he works with a machete harvesting cocoa beans on a farm in Ghana. The hours are long, the work is dirty and exhausting and he is paid no money. But the beans he harvests underpin a massive industry that nets companies, in the developed world, millions and millions of dollars. His situation is not unique. Across parts of Africa thousands of children, some less than ten years of age, are forced to work for little or no pay to harvest cocoa beans. Some are trafficked and moved from country to country to work illegally. Their treatment breaks international labour laws and yet in many cases very little is done to stop this modern day slavery.”

Fair Trade To fix this abuse of children’s rights the Fair Trade was started. The Fair Trade encourages large chocolate companies not to import cheaply through these illegal child abusing farming companies but to buy legally from authorised chocolate dealers. Some of these large companies have agreed to the Fair Trade and are no longer importing cocoa illegally but some still do not comply. They argue that the companies that they import from are not doing these things are exporting their chocolate completely legally. Cadbury and Haighs are a couple of the major chocolate producing companies to comply and go Fair Trade but Nestle still hasn’t changed.

Next time you buy or eat chocolate remember what goes on behind the scenes and look on the box to see if the chocolate that you are buying is Fair Trade. Give these children a fair chance at a childhood and an education.

Bibliography Images: Worldvision.com.au Paradiseintheworld.com Mindthis.ca Goafrica.about.com Ethicalliving.co.za Information: Fairtrade.net Abc.net.au/4corners Haighschocolates.com.au Cadbury.com.au