Chocolate That Feels As Good As It Tastes

When you buy chocolate made with Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa you are helping build schools and dig wells for safe drinking water.

Cocoa farmers worldwide confront serious obstacles to providing for their families. Just like the 600 farmers who started Kavokiva, a Fair Trade cooperative in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. Farmers in the Kavokiva cooperative live in remote rural communities with no roads, no access to basic health care services, and no place to get clean drinking water. The country of Côte d’Ivoire has not recovered from years of civil war and political instability - the government does not provide basic services like paved roads or public education.

In the face of serious poverty, families are unable to take care of their children and many kids end up working on cocoa farms instead of attending school. Fair Trade certification ensures farmers receive a fair price and strictly prohibits slave and child labor on Fair Trade cocoa farms. Fulgence N'Guessan is President of Coopérative Agricole Kavokiva de Daloa (Kavokiva Cooperative) and he explains,   “We are aware that Fair Trade is a unique solution to improve our living conditions and fight against abusive child labor. We will fight with the help of the Fair Trade network to improve the lives of our members.”   The Kavokiva Cooperative started with 600 family farmers, each with small plots of land. Growing cocoa is each farmer’s main source of cash income. In the face of ineffective government, farmer cooperative members look to Kavokiva to provide their families’ basic social needs.   Children in the Kavokiva community attend schools built with Fair Trade community development premiums. These schools have been built in villages where the government school is too far away and where school fees are twice the cost of schools run by the cooperative. Kavokiva Cooperative also uses Fair Trade premiums to buy supplies, like blackboards, for these remote schools.   In villages with only one drinking water well, women had to walk long distances to retrieve the water and then carry it all the way back home to their families. Fair Trade community development premiums have been used to install and fix water pumps in over 40 locations! Now the water is cleaner and the women have been relieved of carrying heavy water buckets, long distances.   Your Fair Trade chocolate choices are protecting children in farming communities across Latin America and Africa and are giving them the chance to stay in school. Every time you indulge in a Fair Trade chocolate bar you help provide clean drinking water to a village. Could that chocolate bar taste any sweeter?   Look for the Fair Trade Certified™ label and enjoy chocolate that makes you feel as good as it tastes! Click here for a list of companies selling Fair Trade chocolate or here to strengthen the worldwide Fair Trade community by making a donation to Fair Trade USA. 

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