Easter Chocolate with a Purpose
One of my favorite Easter memories from childhood is hunting down our Easter baskets and then devouring the chocolate within them. Actually, I have no single memory of that, more like a montage made up of many, many such memories. Guessing that I’m not alone in having such memories, and knowing that many of us will be shopping in the next couple of weeks in preparation for Easter festivities, I wanted to suggest that this year you consider purchasing your Easter treats from Divine Chocolate.
Divine Chocolate is produced from the cocoa beans from the Kuapa Kokoo (“Good Cocoa Farmers Company” in the local Twi language) cooperative, a democratically operated, certified fair trade organization in Ghana, West Africa. That means that the 45,000 members of this cooperative not only use environmentally sustainable farming methods and produce extremely high-quality chocolate, but that a much higher percentage of the profits from the sale of their extraordinary chocolate are returned to the farmers themselves. This, in short, is chocolate with a purpose!
Along with the Kuapa Koloo cooperative, Lutheran World Relief also owns a share of Divine Chocolate and has partnered with them to spread the story of their work to produce a high-quality product that is environmentally responsible and contributes to supporting just wages and treatment of cocoa farmer and their families. (For more on LWR’s partnership with Divine, look here.)
You can order Divine Chocolate – including their Easter specialties! – online from LWR – just click here! You can also find Divine Chocolate bars at Whole Foods and other natural and organic food cooperatives and stores. And you can always order from Divine directly and even at Amazon
Here’s a little more of the Divine story from the Whole Food’s website. (And, for more in-depth info, check out Divine’s story on their own page.)
Divine Chocolate was established in the late 1990s by a forward-looking group of cocoa farmers in Africa. “We were the first fair trade cocoa farmers in Ghana to create a company of our very own,” says Fatima Ali, a member of the Kuapa Kokoo farming cooperative, which owns and operates Divine.
The farmers empowered themselves to set a fair price for their product, so they could enjoy more stability and plan for their families’ futures. For most members, it was also the first time they had owned something besides their farms….
All Divine products are certified by Fairtrade International, and the wrapper on each bar is decorated with Adinkras, traditional West African symbols that represent values Divine holds dear, including democracy, cooperation, learning from the past and adaptability.
Because the farmers own Divine, they enjoy a taste of sweet success from every chocolate sale. The Kuapa Kokoo Farmers’ Trust receives a premium for every ton of cocoa. Those funds have been used for community development projects chosen at the village level, including schools, water wells, vision screenings, women’s clinics, camps for children and many other projects.
So there you go. Great Easter chocolate that also helps bring fair wages, a better life, and hope to farmers and their families in Africa. What could be better on Easter?
Full Disclosure: I serve on the Board of Directors of LWR and am thrilled to be associated with such amazing people. And, having recently toured one of our cocoa farm project sites in Honduras, I am more excited about this work than ever!
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