Chocolate focus during Fairtrade Fortnight  

Wellspring Church in Wirksworth celebrated Fairtrade Fortnight this year with a Fairtrade Chocolate Extravaganza featuring a Fairtrade chocolate fountain and Fairtrade Hoopla 

An early malfunction of the chocolate fountain made (some!) dreams come true by liberally spraying bystanders with warm chocolate. However, it did not diminish their enthusiasm for dipping their marshmallows into what had now become a lagoon rather than a fountain.

The event was organised by the church’s Girls’ and Boys’ Brigades. They heard how cocoa farmers in countries like Ivory Coast have to live on just 74p a day.  Currently £1.86  is the amount a cocoa farmer in West Africa needs to earn each day in order to achieve a living income, so nearly all cocoa farmers in West Africa live in poverty.

One such farmer, Rosine Bekoin joined a Fairtrade cocoa co-operative in 2016, and since then she has not only been guaranteed a minimum price for her crop, plus a Fairtrade Premium on top, but she has also increased her productivity by 50 per cent.  'The Fairtrade Premium has helped us to educate our children and build for the future,' she says.

The Brigades' members and their families responded by making an assortment of cakes and chocolates, to demonstrate how Fairtrade ingredients can be used and to raise money for the Fairtrade Foundation. If Fairtrade is to grow, it’s up to us as consumers to include Fairtrade products in our shopping as much as possible.

The range of Fairtrade products available is expanding all the time. Generous donations from companies including Percol coffee, Divine Chocolate and Liberation Nuts enabled hoopla winners to sample some of the latest offerings.


Image | Opening cocoa pods in Ivory Coast | Peter Caton

 

Click here for more on Fairtrade Fortnight, which runs until 10 March