Saturday, October 18, 2008

Fair Trade Candy this Holloween

Here is a great idea to spread awareness of fair trade.

A group in Wisconsin will ad something to trick or treating this year. The children will also be handing out candy, but it's fair trade candy.

It's called "Reverse Trick or Treating". Sara Boyd a writer for the Green Bay Press Gazette tells us about the organisation with the great idea.

A Better Footprint is a local fair trade organization that aims to educate others in the benefits of organic, eco-friendly or ethically sourced goods. Fair trade is a movement that advocates paying fair price as well as meeting social and environmental standards in the production of a wide variety of goods.

"It really is an awareness campaign," she said. "With a lot of our food, a lot of people never think of where it comes from."

Most of the world's chocolate comes from cocoa grown on small plantation farms in Africa or Latin America, where children between 5 and 17 work long hours in hard labor instead of going to school, she said.

Paul said the idea behind the national Reverse Trick or Treating is to spread the word on one of the largest chocolate consumption days of the year.

"Halloween is a great time when people are buying chocolate, eating chocolate and thinking about it," she said. "It's doubly powerful then when you have kids saying to adults, 'Hey, there's a positive solution to this.'"

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