Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Violent Chocolate by Ryan Martinez

Dear Chocoholic:

‘‘Five-Six-Seven years old hands slaved to make my candy bar I can’t live without’’. Cocoa Beans’ is a poem made by Frieda Dennis Cooper and this line from the poem is saying that little children suffer heart breaking cruelty to make our juicy chocolate.
  Cocoa comes from Cocoa trees in the Ivory Coast. This is where chocolate mostly comes from the kids who cut the cocoa down using machetes. Then the kids cut open the cocoa beans with the machetes. Then the cocoa beans are harvested and the cocoa beans left outside in the sun to be dried. Before that the seeds will be taken out. This is the role children play in the farms. If they deny they will get beaten brutally. Traffickers are people who kidnap children and drive them to the Ivory Coast in a secret path. These kids then become victims of child labor. ‘One of the major players in the Ivory Coast cocoa trade is not surprisingly, the Ivorian government’’. This is from the text Child Slavery and Chocolate by CNN.
  We need to help children because it’s not fair to take away kids' childhood. One way is Reverse Trick or Treating. Another way is buying Fair Trade Chocolate. With this farmers get paid a fair amount . Companies are working to stop the increase of child labor – Mars, Nestle and Cargill- but it is not enough.
 Slavery will one day be stopped. Until that day we must spread awareness and help kids who suffer from child labor.


Sincerely
 Ryan Martinez

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