It’s all about chocolate for Fairtrade Fortnight

This year’s fortnight focused on highlighting the plight of cocoa farmers and the importance of buying Fairtrade chocolate so they can get a fair wage.

Hannah Davis, from the Fairtrade Guernsey Steering Group, had brought 25 bars of Fairtrade chocolate to the Guille-Alles Library in a variety of flavours.

People were encouraged to smell the chocolate, listen to the snap and study it, before taking a taste. Even then they were instructed to hold their nose for the first taste to see how the flavour changed when tasting the treats with and without a sense of smell. The hope was that the young people would understand how high quality Fairtrade chocolate was, while also learning about how farmers should get a fair wage.

‘It is really important to do this with young people so they can understand where their food, drink and clothing comes from, and who the people who grow and produce these things are, and how important it is that those people get a fair price for what they are doing,’ Ms Davis said.

Among the chocolate tasters was 10-year-old Marguerite Domaille and her friend Giovanna Laverallo, 9.

‘When you hold your nose and taste it, it tastes like normal chocolate,’ Giovanna said.

‘But when you let go all the flavours burst out. My favourite is the milk chocolate.’

Seven-year-old Maxim Kincaid said he had been interested to find out more about chocolate.

‘I have learned that only 3% of the money from [non-Fairtrade] chocolate goes to the farmer,’ he said.

‘That is not enough.’