Mommy Advocate

I stumbled upon the website of a most inspiring and spirited mom through her post about child slavery used on cacao farms. I am keeping a blog about all things chocolate as part of a bigger project I’m currently working on developing. Below is a portion of what I posted at The Cocoa Project.

Convinced that moms can change the world, this wife-mother-advocate takes a bold stance against corporate chocolate makers who use child slave labor to produce their chocolate confections. Courtney wants the rest of the world to take action too:

Here’s a little history: There are roughly 280,000 children working on cocoa farms in west Africa, with about 200,000 of those working in The Ivory Coast. A substantial number of those children have been trafficked from other African countries. The work these children perform is categorized as “dangerous” and they are forced to work long hours while being denied an education. The cocoa industry became aware of this issue about 10 years ago and even ratified an agreement in 2001 promising to end the worst forms of child labor by 2005. They did not deliver on this promise, and were given an extension to follow through in 50% of the cocoa regions by 2008. Instead they altered the wording of the agreement to say they simply had to REPORT the problem…not actually do anything about it. (You can learn more about this issue at www.stopthetraffik.com or check out their Where Does Our Chocolate Come From Fact Sheet or FAQs.)