Discussion Board Week 9 Chocolate- The Bitter Truth

This week I had decided to begin to support another community action after watching Four Corners on Monday night http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2010/s2885745.htm..

I will confess I love chocolate and eat it often, so to make this decision was going to be a personal sacrifice as it is both limiting and costly action. None the less the program has spurred me into taking a personal stand on the issue.

The story follows the easy with which coco beans which have been farmed by slave labour in Ghana, mostly by children, including children who have been kidnapped and enslaved on these farms.

The story follows the claims of the major Europe chocolate makers who have signed up to Fairtrade programs. The claim is that some of their products (these are labelled as fair trade) only has coco from farms without abusive labour practices.

The practice of selling coco beans is a complicated process and has many points of selling, and once sold to a company that can on sell this legitimizes the coco beans as it now has documentation.

After this story I made the decision only to purchase free trade chocolate as a contribution to the community action that is needed to support the children and communities in Africa. It is this kind of community action that can contribute to significant changes within their community.

I am but one person- but I have begun telling all my friends and family- and now this group in the hope that others will also make the choice to be involved in the community action.

In keeping with this theme I have recently finished reading an article by Bob Manteaw (Community Development Journal Vol 43 No 4 October 2008 pp. 428–443) http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org/  on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The article was written in 2008 and discuss how corporations are more and more not just recognising but committing to the practice of contributing in meaningful ways with their communities.

Cadbury (Australia) has committed to build on the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (CCP) that was launched just over a year ago. They committed to investing AU$100m over ten years to help improve the lives of cocoa farmers in Ghana and other parts of the world. Cadbury had also committed to paying producer organisations the internationally agreed Fairtrade minimum price, as well as an additional Fairtrade premium that is to be used as part of a collective investment in both business and community projects which aim to improve their lives in the future

http://www.fta.org.au/cadbury-announcement/cadbury-fairtrade-q.

Given last years World Financial Crisis (WFC) and yesterdays stunning crash on the stock markets, I am wondering how committed organisations are right now to contributing to their communities. The commitment by the individuals to support community action, even in hard financial times will go a long way to show large corporations the value of remaining committed to community development. So let us keep fighting the fight long after this semester ends for community action.

Something for you to think about. Bye for today. Karen.