Mini Vinnies

In our meeting on Friday 6 March our new Mini Vinnies for 2020 unanimously voted once again to run a Fair Trade Easter Egg Raffle this term. 

A note was sent home last week to families of our Mini Vinnies requesting donations of Fair Trade Easter Eggs. Fairtrade Easter Eggs can be donated to the School Office until Wednesday 1 April (Week 9) and the raffle will be drawn on Wednesday 8 April (Week 10). Raffle tickets will be sold before and after school on the playground in Week 8 and can be purchased at 1 for 50cents or 3 for $1. Our fundraising will go towards the Kitenden Preschool Project, to support a community in Tanzania, Africa that has been struggling due to drought and modernisation which our school has sponsored for the past four years.

Fairtrade Easter Egg Raffle

The aim of our Mini Vinnies Fairtrade Easter Egg Raffle is to raise awareness of the global social justice issue of child labour and slavery in the chocolate industry, particularly in West Africa where the majority of the world’s cocoa production occurs. It is very sad to think that child exploitation has occurred in the production of the Easter Eggs we are enjoying.

Baptist Word Aid Australia and World Vision Australia produced a report in 2016 titled ‘A Matter of Taste’ on the topic of child labour and slavery in the chocolate industry.  In this report it was estimated that 2.26 and young people worked as child labourers. It was common for children to be trafficked into cocoa bean farms and subjected to unfair and exploitative treatment. This situation is exacerbated by poverty and unfair trade conditions whereby farmers are not paid sufficiently for their cocoa beans. 

There is a push for change for the better. Fairtrade, UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance are three certification bodies in Australia who identify companies using ethically sourced cocoa beans from farmers engaging in good labour practices and sustainable farming methods.

Stop the Traffik Australia and Baptist World Aid Australia have produced an excellent report on this topic titled ‘A Matter of Taste’ which can be viewed at 

http://acrath.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/A-Matter-of-Taste-2017-Full-version.pdf 

ACRATH (Australian Catholic Religious against Trafficking in Humans) advocate strongly and have great resources:

https://acrath.org.au/take-action/slavery-free-easter-chocolate/ 

A guide listing Easter Eggs that are free from trafficked labour is at https://baptistworldaid.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/goodeggguide2016.pdf . It includes:

• Aldi's UTZ Certified Dairy Fine, Choceur, Moser Roth and Specially Selected Easter chocolate ranges.
• Chocolatier Australia's Fairtrade milk and dark chocolate 100g eggs, available through Coles, Woolworths, David Jones and other chocolate suppliers.
• Coles also has a range of branded UTZ, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance-certified Easter chocolates.
• The Haigh's Chocolate-made Easter egg range is UTZ Certified.
• Divine chocolate eggs and bunnies are Fairtrade certified and are available through IGA, other selected stores and online. 

What can we do?

• Choose chocolate with Fairtrade, UTZ or Rainforest Alliance certification.
• Advocate by writing letters to:
  -  chocolate producers requesting they work towards 100% ethically sourced cocoa. (Worthy of mention is Nestle, the first company in Australia to achieve 100% ethically sourced cocoa for their chocolate bar range).
  - retailers requesting they stock 100% certified chocolate. (Aldi and Haighs entire Easter Egg range are certified against human trafficking). 

Feel welcome to visit or contact me on 6249 8869 or send an email to brenda.galvin@cg.catholic.edu.au

Brenda Galvin
School Chaplain