Snack on fair trade chocolate! Participatory bet on fair trade
Joint campaign of the Saxon Fairtrade cities on 14 November
On Tuesday, 14 November, people in Chemnitz will take up pen and paintbrush. This is when anyone interested can take part in the Fairtrade Cities competition.
Six Saxon cities that are committed to fair trade will be competing in November. Together, they have entered the first state-wide Fairtrade bet: Which city will succeed in customising and imaginatively designing the most fair trade chocolate bars? The Fairtrade cities of Chemnitz, Eibenstock, Freiberg, Dresden and Leipzig are competing against each other in the bet. Taucha is also taking part and wants to become a Fairtrade city. Each participating city has one day during the campaign week to design the chocolates.
Anyone interested can take part and paint or stick on a label according to their own ideas. The chocolate bars are now available from the FAIREwelt shop at Straße der Nationen 12. There is a choice of two GEPA+ brand flavours: Whole milk or dark chocolate. The number of designed bars must be reported by e-mail with the subject "Bet" to info(at)faire-welt-chemnitz.de or via a note in the shop by 17 November. Anyone who would like to share their creation should send a photo. The winner is the city that has created the most chocolate bars in relation to the number of inhabitants and as a total number.
There are many ways to support the bet on 14 November and design your own chocolate, for example as a Christmas present. There will be a special creative table in the FAIREwelt shop on the day. "We already have commitments from a kindergarten, after-school groups, parishes and clubs to take part in the day at their facilities. The Environmental Centre and the Museum of Natural History Chemnitz are also interested in taking part," says Britta Mahlendorff from the Fairtrade City steering group. "But we still need more creative foodies to decide the state-wide bet in Chemnitz's favour."
Background
The Fairtrade cities in Saxony regularly organise campaigns to draw attention to fair trade products. Their nationwide bet focuses on chocolate and a bitter downside of the sweet treat: child labour in cocoa cultivation.
An estimated 1.5 million girls and boys work on plantations in West Africa (study by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago from October 2020)].
This is where companies in Germany source most of their cocoa for chocolate.
But there are alternatives: fair trade chocolate, which allows farmers to receive higher prices for their cocoa - because the poverty of the producers is still the main cause of exploitative child labour.