Power to the kids by Randy Cerda

Dear reader,

   Did you know where the chocolate that you ate came from? 60% of the cocoa comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast in Africa. These places use child labor for the cocoa. They kidnap them and transport them across the border to the Ivory Coast. This is called “human trafficking”. When they get to the Ivory Coast they send them to the cocoa plantations where they get treated as slaves. Companies like Hershey's use the cocoa from these cocoa plantations to make the chocolate we love.

   A recommendation for you is to buy “fair trade chocolate” .The fair trade movement guarantees that farmers receive a premium of $150 on top of market prices for each ton of cocoa they produce as long as they meet specifiable labor standards. Read this poem by Frieda Dennis Cooper” Little chocolate hands lead to small chocolate faces, eyes filled with hope of more than $1 a day”. That is the sad picture of children on the cocoa farms. For example the Dominicans use Haitian people (from Haiti) cut sugar canes and they don’t get paid sufficiently to survive though they even use child labor. 72 % of the U.S sugar comes from Dominican Republic.

   What can you do to help? You should support “reverse trick or treating”,This is when you trick or treat and you exchange the chocolate you get with fair trade chocolate. 
      The public needs to know about the life of children abused on cocoa plantations. "There are an outrageous number of children who are suffering from horrible back pain and other ergonomic neck issues between the ages of 5 through 18 just so we can have chocolate”. according to the article on Reverse Trick or Treating by World Watch Institute. 

   Next time you take a bite of chocolate remember what happens to the kids who cut the cocoa beans down.