Reverse Trick-or-Treating’ to protest use of child-labor in harvesting cocoa -- United Methodist Church among lead organizations promoting Halloween educational effort.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and the General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) of The United Methodist Church are collaborating again to raise awareness about fair trade this Halloween. Ten to twenty thousand groups of children will hand chocolate back to adults during trick-or-treating rounds this Halloween. The children will distribute fair-trade-certified chocolate attached to a card explaining the labor and environmental problems in the cocoa industry globally and how fair trade provides a solution.


UMCOR has a long-standing relationship with fair-trade company Equal Exchange. Many local churches participate in The UMCOR Coffee Project, which provides fairly trade coffee from Equal Exchange.

This Halloween event, Reverse Trick-or-Treating, was launched three years ago to raise awareness of the pervasive problem of child labor, forced labor and trafficking in the cocoa fields. It is hoped Reverse Trick-or-Treating will empower consumers to press the chocolate industry for more fair cocoa sourcing policies, and shift the industry toward sourcing fair-trade-certified cocoa.

Fair trade standards prohibit the use of abusive child labor, contain extensive environmental sustainability protections, and enable farmers to escape poverty.

The Reverse-Trick-or-Treating program has joined nonprofit organizations, such as Global Exchange and UMCOR and GBCS, with Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate companies such as Equal Exchange, Alter Eco, Sweet Earth, and Coco-Zen and local schools, faith groups and youth organizations to raise public awareness about Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate.

Two important developments
This year’s event comes on the heels of two important developments in the cocoa industry.

First, Interpol announced in August that it identified and rescued 54 children from slavery in cocoa fields in Cote d’Ivoire. The children were as young as 11 years old, endured hazardous working conditions, labored 12 hours a day, and were not paid for their work. This demonstrates that the chocolate industry has still not gone far enough to end child slavery and trafficking in the cocoa fields, even though the top chocolate companies committed to end these practices as part of the Harkin-Engel Protocol signed in 2001.

More than 60 national nonprofit organizations and chocolate companies have united to call on the cocoa industry to embrace stronger cocoa sourcing standards in a statement entitled the “Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing,” which can be viewed at www.reversetrickortreating.org.

Second, in 2009, Cadbury became the first major chocolate brand to achieve fair-trade-certification for its Dairy Milk chocolate bars in the United Kingdom. Cadbury has announced planned certification in additional countries.

Human rights, fair trade and anti-trafficking activists have applauded Cadbury’s leadership, while urging the company to extend fair-trade certification to its products distributed in the United States. A group of advocates has also been actively pressing Hershey’s to become the first mainstream U.S.-based company to achieve fair-trade certification.

Kids' sense of fairness
“Kids have a well-developed sense of fairness. I regularly hear stories of U.S. schoolchildren who are really outraged to learn that mainstream chocolate companies are making them complicit in the enslavement of their peers,” said Adrienne Fitch-Frankel, director of Global Exchange’s Fair Trade campaign, “Kids are eager to show solidarity and make it possible for their peers to go to school and go out and play.

“That is why so many kids are thrilled to participate in Reverse Trick-or-Treating and make a difference. Now, it’s up to the chocolate companies to listen to their important message.”

Susan Burton, GBCS director of U.M. Seminar Program, found a postcard promoting fair-trade chocolate in her child’s trick-or-treat bag a couple of years ago. Burton immediately recognized what a timely and creative educational tool the postcard was. That realization led to GBCS’s involvement in Reverse Trick-or-Treating.

"This is an example of how everybody has the ability to make some change," said Burton.

Human rights advocacy
The Reverse Trick-or-Treating campaign is an initiative of the human rights advocacy group Global Exchange, which has record of successfully encouraging major corporations to adopt new business practices.

Nearly a quarter million Fair Trade Chocolates and informational cards have been provided in the United States by Equal Exchange, Alter Eco, Sweet Earth, and Coco-Zen and in Canada by La Siembra, under the leadership of Equal Exchange. Equal Exchange is a full service provider of high quality, organic coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate and healthy snacks. 100% of Equal Exchange products are fairly traded, benefiting over 30 small farmer cooperatives in 16 countries around the world.

The national organizations with a lead role in Reverse Trick-or-Treating are Africa Action, Fair Trade Federation, Global Exchange, Green America, International Labor Rights Forum, Not for Sale, Oasis/Stop the Traffik, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and The United Methodist Church.

Global poverty is one of the focus areas of The United Methodist Church. This initiative offers United Methodists an opportunity to increase awareness of systems contributing to global poverty in their churches and beyond by handing out fair trade chocolate and a post card with additional information and resources to support fair trade products. Many local United Methodist churches already serve Equal Exchange’s Fair Trade products because they recognize their ability to participate in ending the exploitation of child slave laborers on cocoa farms.