Dear
Chocolate Lover
Wwwwssshh! That’s the sound of a whip.
Barbarous people forcing kids to work at a young age with no pay or little pay
harvesting cocoa beans in the Ivory Coast. Welcome to the life of 7 year old
Abdul. He is a child slave in Ivory Coast cracking cocoa beans and dumping the
milky white cocoa beans in a pile.
Children play a critical role on
cocoa plantations. Children harvest the football size cocoa beans with
machetes. The children are
brought to be put to work in cocoa farms
and even trafficked to the Ivory Coast. When trafficked, they are separated
from their families. Children crack the cocoa beans and then they ferment the beans with banana
leaves. Can you imagine cocoa industry signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol to
eliminate cocoa grown using forced child labor. But they are still using cocoa
beans harvested using forced child labor.
Children working in cocoa plantations get injuries either
from the pesticides or from the machetes. When harvesting the cocoa beans the
children can have accidents cutting down the cocoa beans and cut themselves.
When cutting down the cocoa beans their skin starts burning because of the
pesticide. The video ‘’The Darkside of Chocolate‘’ showed a girl about the age
of 9 with scars and bruises on her body all bloody.
Some courses
of action are reverse trick treating. Reverse trick or treating is kids giving
fair trade chocolate during Halloween.Fair trade chocolate that is not made with child labor
and pay the farmers a well amount of money. Reverse trick or treating is way to
try to raise awareness of child labor in cocoa farms. In conclusion, those are
the dangers of child labor in the Ivory Coast. Children play a critical role in
the Ivory Coast.
People need to be aware of the story behind a lot of the
chocolate they eat.
Yours
truly
Randy
Garcia
No comments:
Post a Comment