Free Trade Chocolate
Abigail Benjamin
(a guest post by my daughter)
Hi! I am Maria. I am 8 years old. I love to bake. I always bake with chocolate. But then I found this Chocolate Book from the library that talked about the dark side of Chocolate. Apparently, slaves are still used to harvest chocolate in Africa. The worse part is that most of the slaves are young kids like me!
I told my family that I am not baking anymore with chocolate from slaves. "I don't want to have blood in my chocolate." So we found Free Trade Chocolate that doesn't use slaves. These companies help small cocoa farmers who use good practices for people and the environment. I want want to spend my money for good.
Not all companies are good, especially not Hershey. Hershey is a factory that is a few miles from my house. I used to love Hershey chocolates. They were my favorite. Now I don't buy any chocolate from Hershey because they will not promise to stop buying slave harvested chocolate until 2020.
If you want to buy "good" chocolate look for a Fair Trade Label or UTZ certified. We buy our chocolate online and at Aldi's.
I want to help kids in Africa. I hope you join with me too!