THE BAD STORY OF CHOCOLATE by Fabian Garcia

Dear chocolate lovers,             

Imagine working for an owner on a farm to get money for your family. The owner says you would have to crack the Coco beans shell and chop them off trees with a machete. You would think that this would be a great, but you’re wrong. After years of working for your owner, you feel tired and hurt and abused by all the work you did for your owner. Then you ask for your money for the hard work you do and your owner gives you nothing. You’re angry and sad and you want to say something, but are scared of getting even more abused by your owner. Isn’t it important for us to raise our voices for the voiceless people?

The role children play in the production of chocolate is horrifying. Its child labor, children are making chocolate for people like us to enjoy. It is very cruel, 75% of world’s cocoa is produced by Ivory Coast and West African Countries, Children have to use big knives called machetes to cut a fruit called cocoa beans that have cocoa in it. They wear dirty clothes have  machetes marks on their legs and are stolen from there owner family. The people who smuggle children to make them slaves are called trafficking. The traffickers steal children around those ages of 7 to 12. In 2006 132 children were trafficked. In 2007 140 children were trafficked and on 2008-2009 150 children were rescued. Some children are not able to escape  their master, but some are able to, like a girl named Mary. Mary was stolen from her home in Mali by a woman. Thank goodness the under cover agent against saw her and took her from the woman. Now she is safe with her family. These are some of the shocking facts exposed in the documentary “The Dark side of Chocolate’’. 

Thanks to this cruel practice wonderful children can’t get an education they always wanted, nice clothing and decent shelter. The children have to go to the farm and work for a long time and don’t get paid by their master for there hard work. Then the children have to grow up ass a sad and depressed person and next thong you know, the master of all the children continues to smuggle other children.

We have to help the voiceless people quickly. Some actions that we can all do to help them is this, give back Fair Trade chocolate on Halloween in return for candy you get, This is called Reverse Trick or Treating. These companies including Equal Exchange, Theo chocolate and Divine Chocolate sell Fair Trade chocolate. Fair Trade chocolate is when the government pays the farmers of some cocoa farms more money for not using child labor. I think these actions can really help the voiceless children a lot.

Also another action that we could do to help the the suffering children is with some Valentine’s day activities. We could give/send a letter to the Hershey’s telling them to stop using child labor for making chocolate.

  Let us help the voiceless people find their

voices!