What Should Really Scare You This Halloween

It is that time of year when the ghouls and goblins begin to descend upon us to scare us with their howls and haunts.  Stories of ghost and demons find there way into your homes and dreams.  However what is even scarier, is the fact that the Cocoa industry often traffics children to work as slaves, according to United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 200,000 children in West Africa alone, are living in conditions of forced labor and slavery on cocoa farms. Much of our chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast, which according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) produces 43% of the worlds cocoa.  According to the ILO, over 132 million children, aged 5-14 years old, work in agriculture around the world, they are just a segment of an the estimated 246 million child laborers around the globe. Therefore the really fight this Halloween is that your chocolaty treats may come at the price of child’s life. These children are placed in hazardous working conditions in order to ensure that we have our sweet treats, and this truly a scary story.

October is Fair Trade month
October is a particularly opportune month to raise awareness about the use of forced labor, child labor, and other exploitative labor practices in the chocolate industry. A number of organizations are hosting campaigns to help community members raise awareness about these issues and to encourage the chocolate industry to continue to address these abuses in the industry.

The Dark Side of Chocolate
The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), along with Global Exchange, Green America and Oasis USA, are organizing screenings of The Dark Side of Chocolate all across the country. This new documentary exposes the ongoing use of child labor, forced labor and trafficking in the cocoa industry in West Africa. It is a great resources for increasing awareness of this critical labor rights issue.

Additionally ILRF, as part of the Raise the Bar Hershey campaign, they are asking concerned individuals to host screenings in their communities throughout October 2010, especially during a national week of action from October 25 through October 31.  For more information, contact Tim Newman at Tim.Newman@ILRF.org or 202-347-4100. To watch the trailer, click here or to download a community screening toolkit, click here.

Reverse Trick-or-Treating
Ten to twenty thousand groups of children will hand chocolate back to adults during their regular neighborhood trick-or-treating rounds this Halloween. The children will distribute Fair Trade certified chocolate attached to a card explaining the labor and environmental problems in the cocoa industry globally and how Fair Trade provides a solution. The event, Reverse Trick-or-Treating, was launched to raise awareness of the pervasive problem of child labor, forced labor and trafficking in the cocoa fields, to empower consumers to press the chocolate industry for more fair cocoa sourcing policies, to shift the industry toward sourcing Fair Trade certified cocoa, and to inform consumers about Fair Trade companies that are leading the way to industry reform. Fair Trade standards prohibit the use of abusive child labor, contain extensive environmental sustainability protections, and enable farmers to escape poverty.

So why not gear up to join school children of all ages and adults across the US and Canada this Halloween for Reverse Trick or Treating.  Individuals and groups will unite to bring awareness to modern slavery in the Cocoa Industry and beyond, by giving Fair Trade chocolate back to adults, as they Trick-or-Treating door-to-door in their communities on Halloween.

How is Reverse Trick or Treating done?  The chocolate is attached to a card with information about social and environmental justice issues in the cocoa industry and how buying Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a sustainable solution.

The best part is that, there is no reason for you not to participate, as Reverse Trick-or-Treating kits are FREE (Participants pay the cost of postage only), thanks to the generous donations of Fair Trade chocolate companies: Equal Exchange, Alter Eco, Sweet Earth, and La Siembra (& others in Canada).

DEADLINE TO REQUEST KITS:  October 13
To order your kits today click here for the United States or here for Reverse Trick-or-Treating in Canada!

For other great ideas on how you can have a Fair Trade Halloween and see your chocolate is slave free see the Human Trafficking blog on Change.org, where they are running a ‘chocolate edition’ throughout the month.