It's an Easter Egg hunt!
“I honestly think if there was no fairtrade chocolate I would give [chocolate] up,” said Jen, “After meeting children who have been enslaved, taken from their families, living in horrific conditions, missing out on an education… I would not want to put that product in my mouth. I would not want it anywhere near me.”
Jen started volunteering with STOP THE TRAFFIK soon after it began in 2006. She spent some time visiting projects in Cambodia that summer and ended up volunteering with a project that worked with women and children rescued from the sex industry after being sold into it.
“It was an incredibly haunting experience….As I came back I realised that [sex trade trafficking] was alive and kicking all over the world, even on my doorstep.”
A huge part of STOP THE TRAFFIK’s campaigning has been directed at pressuring chocolate companies and governments to buy their chocolate fairtrade. And there have been some major achievements along the way: more people now buy and eat fairtrade, more people than ever know about it and even Cadbury’s and Nestle are making selected lines fairtrade.
It's an Easter egg hunt!
“[It’s] not enough but monumental,” said Jen, “For a company like Nestle, who have openly said in recent history that they would never go Fairtrade because they are a business and not a charity, for them to make that concession is amazing.”
But isn’t Fairtrade chocolate just less tasty and more expensive? “There is too much a range now to say there isn’t a fairtrade bar that suits your taste. As for more expensive, no not really…
“But the fact that the price isn’t that different shows that there must be something seriously wrong with the price of unfairly traded chocolate. As the price continues to drop, farmers cannot afford workers and so children get sold into it.
It's an Easter Egg hunt!
“Let it be clear that from the evidence I have seen, it is not the wealthy farmers in the Ivory Coast who are making the profit. Nope, they are still pretty poor. I am guessing it’s the shareholders in the multinational corporations.”
Is this why Jen feels so strongly about fairtrade? “A person is not a commodity. They are a human being with hopes, dreams, fears, annoying habits and funny family stories. To strip that away from someone and put a price on that person so that he or she can be exploited and used again and again – well, something in me says that is inherently wrong.”
But that doesn’t necessarily mean our Easter needs to be chocolate-free. Jen suggested we buy fairtrade chocolate eggs or make our own. “Also, enjoy yourself. It’s flippin’ Easter after all!”
STOP THE TRAFFIK is a diverse global group of people who stand together to educate, advocate and fundraise, centred on the simple truth: “We believe that people shouldn’t be bought and sold”.
If you want to know more about it, visit the STOP THE TRAFFIK website or e-mail Jen at jen.conlan@stopthetraffik.org Jen is now the regional co-ordinator for 16 to 25-year-olds across the South West.
Adele Jarrett-Kerr
