Valentine's Day is a major chocolate buying holiday, but your gifts for your sweetheart should not come at the expense of workers rights! Forced labor, child labor and trafficking continues in the cocoa industry in West Africa. Almost all major chocolate companies have begun to commit to using independent, third-party programs to certify that their cocoa suppliers comply with international labor standards, but Hershey continues to lag behind the industry.
Here are some easy ways to take action on Valentine's Day:
- Send an e-mail to Hershey [1];
- Post a message like this on Hershey's Facebook page [2]: Have a heart on Valentine’s Day! It’s time to raise the bar by stopping child labor and using Fair Trade Certified cocoa! http://bit.ly/HersheyCo [3]
- Post a tweet like this on Twitter: @Hersheys: Have a heart on #Valentines Day! Stop #childlabor & start using #fairtrade #chocolate! http://bit.ly/HersheyCo [3] #VDay (Plz RT!)
Throughout this week, here are some other ways that you can still take action to tell Hershey to go Fair Trade leading up to Valentine's Day:
- SEND VALENTINES TO HERSHEY! Create your own personalized Valentine telling Hershey to start using Fair Trade Certified cocoa for its products, like the iconic chocolate Kiss. Address your Valentine to Hershey CEO David J. West and mail it to: 100 Crystal A Drive, Hershey, PA 17033. You can also download this PDF of a Valentine [4] to mail to the company. If you make your own Valentine, please do scan an image of it or take a photograph of your Valentine and send it to ILRF Campaigns Director Tim Newman at: tim.newman[at]ilrf.org. We'll post them online and you can get a 10% discount to Global Exchange's store by sending your images and photographs to us! Please mail your Valentines to Hershey by February 18, 2011.
- HOST A SCREENING OF THE DARK SIDE OF CHOCOLATE! You can host a screening of this documentary that exposes the ongoing use of trafficked child labor in the cocoa industry in your community. Click here [5] to order your DVD and click here [6] to download a screening toolkit.
Together we can support cocoa farmers and workers and make Valentine's Day sweet for everyone!
Also, don't forget about our petitions to Hershey! You can download the petition here [7] and collect signatures in your community.