Divine Intervention Inspires Chocolate Sales

By Kai T. Hill

Gathered in their high school auditorium, students at Holy Names Academy screamed the name of a candy bar.

Divine Chocolate is made of 100 percent fair trade cocoa. Buying a bar helps improve the livelihoods of cocoa growers in Ghana. This is why students rallied around Divine Chocolate. This is why they knew the candy bars would be an easy sell.

"Just the fact that it's fair trade gives them motivation. This is something they take pride in," says Kim Mendez Dawson, vice principal of student life at the all-girls' school in Seattle.

After the loud, cheer-rousing auditorium display, students filtered into their homerooms, where they picked up their chocolate. Each box contained 30 bars of slender Divine Chocolate bars, wrapped in decorative paper inscribed with information on fair trade. Each students sold about 90 bars.

"The building is abuzz with energy, likely a result of the mass quantities we've all consumed thus far," wrote junior Julia O'Connor on Catholic Relief Services' Fair Trade blog. "As the bars are sold, we hope the candy sale will promote not just chocolate indulgence but a greater knowledge of fair trade as well."

Learning about fair trade principles led Holy Names students to convince administrators to switch this year's candy sale to fair trade chocolate. In keeping with the national political headlines, the "chocolate bailout" became the students' creative theme to raise funds for new school equipment and to help cap tuition costs, says Dawson, Holy Names' vice principal of student life.

For 10 days in February, the entire school—from students and teachers to cafeteria staff—bustled in a marathon to sell chocolate. Student groups made video pleas about why they needed chocolate "bailouts." The hallways were plastered with fair trade posters bearing portraits of cocoa growers. Students left school ready to set up shop in their parishes and elsewhere. The school's bus drivers were easy targets and relented, buying a few bars. A cafeteria worker from Somalia picked up a few boxes to sell once she learned that it would help struggling farmers get a better price for their cocoa. "She has a brother in Somalia and with conditions there says she feels a need to help," says Dawson. "We're getting a lot of support."

By the time the fundraiser ended, students had sold 1,290 cases of chocolate—38,700 bars. The prizes for top sellers included a day off from school, a day to wear denim and a chocolate fountain party.

Fairness for Growers

Holy Names is one of about 600 schools and community groups that participate in Catholic Relief Services' Raise Money Right contest. Participants raise funds for their school while supporting struggling cocoa farmers around the world. CRS' Fair Trade Fund receives a percentage of the money from chocolate sales and provides grants to help fair trade farmers and artisans in developing countries. The fund also supports organizations in the United States that help promote fair trade.

Divine products are made with fair trade cocoa beans grown by farmers like Comfort Kumeah and Cecilia Appianim, who are members of the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana. Through CRS-supported fair trade programs these farmers receive more money for their cocoa yields than the local market would grant.

Better earnings allow them to support their families, send their children to school and invest in community projects, including a well that provides villagers with clean drinking water.

A Seed Planted

Students at Holy Names learned about fair trade at the school's annual solidarity week. The event was launched three years ago by math and theology teacher Lynette Grypp, who traveled to Kosovo with CRS' Frontiers of Justice program in the summer of 2006.

What students learned, Grypp says, helped them become agents of global solidarity.

"Education is one of the areas of interconnectedness and interaction that exposes them to people all over the world," says Grypp. Students regularly perform local community service projects. They also helped paint a kindergarten in Costa Rica and raised money for India.

Grypp says students naturally took a liking to fair trade. "The concepts of fair trade are clear and make sense, and it's an easy sell."

Dawson says the initiative shown by students proves they are listening. "They really want to make a difference where they are."

Kai T. Hill is an associate web producer for CRS. She works at the Baltimore headquarters.

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. We alleviate suffering and provide assistance to people in need in nearly 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality.