CCAT's Chocolate Campaign

This Valentine's Day, CCAT is planning to hold a Fair Trade Chocolate Campaign that will raise awareness of slavery in the cocoa industry.

Chocolate Action Pack


An estimated 284,000 children are working on cocoa farms in hazardous tasks such as using machetes and applying pesticides and insecticides without the necessary protective equipment. Many of these children work on family farms, the children of cocoa farmers who are so trapped in poverty they have to make the hard choice to keep their children out of school to work. The IITA also reported that about 12,500 children working on cocoa farms had no relatives in the area, a warning sign for trafficking. Moreover, while not all of these children are slaves, at least 15,000 are estimated to be enslaved in the Ivory Coast, and that is not including adult bonded laborers.












Many NGOs are currently operating Cocoa-specific campaigns:
Global Exchange
Stop the Traffik
The International Cocoa Initiative (a truly fantastic collaborative effort)

While Fair Trade products cost more than regular products, it is clear why there is a markup when you think about the promise of a bottom price that Fair Trade organizations promise farmer, and the requirement that any farm participating in the fair trade agreement will not utilize slavery, child labor, or exploitative labor practices.

We will have more updates and details on the sales come in!