Unfair trade, child slavery

We the Grade 6 students of Brooklyn District School would like to propose a boycott against a number of international companies that produce chocolate. Those companies have been buying cocoa beans from farmers who produce their cocoa by child slave labour. They also have been giving the farmers an unfair price for their cocoa.

In countries like Ghana and Cote D’ivoire, children work on cocoa farms as slaves and are never paid for their work. The children are kidnapped in countries like Mali. The children are promised money for their work but they never get it.

The companies have not been paying the farmers they buy the cocoa beans from a fair price. The farmers get about $0.01 for every $0.60 chocolate bar the companies sell. The farmers have to use child slaves to grow and produce the cocoa beans because they can’t afford to pay workers.

We are asking you to help us boycott these companies so that they start to buy fair trade cocoa beans. Some 84 million pounds of cocoa beans are produced by fair trade cooperative farmers, but only 1 million pounds were sold at fair trade prices. Farmers deserve to sell all of the cocoa beans at a fair price.

From the Grade 6 students of Brooklyn District School