5 Ideas for a Fair Trade Easter

1. Start out with one of these adorable Mini Bolga Baskets, hand-woven by women in Ghana. Each basket is unique, so every child will have a basket entirely their own. They are the perfect size for little hands, and after Easter can be used at your local farmers market. A friend of mine has her kids bring their mini bolga baskets to the market, and they each get to fill them with their own healthy snacks for the week <3

2. I know fair trade chocolates can be hard to find in your local grocery stores, but if you’re up for the task, many co-op type stores carry yummy fair trade options. You can also order fair trade chocolate online – I found a few favorites here, like these organic & fairly traded Milk Chocolate Eggs from Equal Exchange. They also have some fair trade chocolate bars available.

3. Add one of these special little bunnies from Bla Bla Kids – handmade by expert knitters in Peru, with a commitment to fair trade. These lovies are sure to become one of your children’s favorites for many years to come. I especially love Pierre the Bunny with his green satchel & scarf. For your sweet little girl, there are a couple of adorable choices, Fleur (pictured here) and Mirabelle.

4. These sweet little decorative gourd containers are a fun & unique addition where your little ones can keep their special treasures. Hand-carved by a small fair trade cooperative in Peru, there are several designs to choose from available here at Seven Hopes United; you can also pick some up in person if you’re in San Diego this Saturday at the Little Italy Mercato.

5. And last but not least, add a set of our favorite kid-friendly Eva Cups & Bowls. Choose a different color for each child, and they have their very own special set of dishes for water, juice, and snacks. Stainless steel, food-safe, and hand-painted by talented artisans in Kashmir, India.

What are some of your ideas for an ethical Fair Trade Easter basket? Please let us know what you would add in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you…maybe you even have some great handmade ideas?

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In the United States, Easter is a major chocolate buying holiday, and an excellent opportunity to show your support for Fair Trade. In fact, more chocolate is sold in the US at Easter than any other time of the year, second only to Halloween.

Why is buying fair trade chocolate important? Right now, the African Ivory Coast is the source of 75% of America’s chocolate. There are over 600,000 cocoa farms in Ivory Coast that are very poor. The U.S. State Department estimates that over 15,000 child-slaves work on plantations in the Ivory Coast alone. They have been kidnapped or sold by their parents to work from age 8 and on, cutting cocoa pods from trees and processing them, often at the end of a whip.

In other countries of West Africa, some other 269,000 children work with machetes and deadly chemicals, applying pesticides and fungicides to trees without wearing protective garments and without proper training. These children are required to work in slave-like conditions, beaten regularly, and are forced to work over 12-hour days. There is limited or no schooling available to them and once at the farms, they are unable to leave. Amazingly, some of the cocoa used in popular confections – the chocolate you eat every day – is grown and harvested under such conditions.

The chocolate industry claims to have no involvement in the wage slavery and child slavery practices occurring in the Ivory Coast nation. However, 70% of their cocoa comes from the Ivory Coast and they’ve made no moves to procure fair trade cocoa sources. Here is a breakdown of the path traveled: The cocoa is grown on small cocoa plantations. Ivory Coast middle-men purchase the cocoa at a pittance, then sell it to the four corporate exporting companies: Cargill, Archer-Daniels Midland, Barry Callbaut, and Saf-Cacao. These four exporters then turn around and sell the cocoa to the many name-brand chocolate-producing companies we all know so well.

Fair Trade certification guarantees that you are not an unwilling participant of this very inhumane practice. Fair Trade Certified cocoa only comes from certified farmers’ cooperatives, organized to strengthen their farmer-members economically so they can provide for their families and educate their children. Fair Trade certification is a guarantee to processors, handlers, retailers and consumers, that the cocoa beans used in this chocolate were produced in a way that does no social harm.

Use this opportunity to send a letter to large chocolate corporations, on behalf of workers and children on cocoa farms in West Africa, asking them to start sourcing fair trade chocolate for their confections. You can also make this an educational Easter activity for your kids or Sunday school class – have them color a picture to send to Hershey’s with a hand-written note asking them to stop sourcing chocolate that uses forced child labor. Or use this coloring page created by the “Raise the Bar, Hershey!” Campaign.

Send it to:
The Hershey Company
Attn: David West, CEO
100 Crystal A Drive
Hershey, PA 17003

Increase the demand for fair trade chocolate by buying from companies that are already committed to using fair trade ingredients in their chocolate. You can choose from two of our favorite fair trade chocolate bars, classic Milk Chocolate and White Chocolate With Strawberries, from our Fair Trade certified partners Divine Chocolate, on the Seven Hopes United online fair trade store.

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