After Veganuary comes Fairbruary - when we choose products that are kind to both people and planet.
Fair trade campaigners and supporters around the world have a vital role to play in encouraging their friends, neighbours and community leaders to choose Fairtrade. If we follow the example of Veganuary which helps us to add a couple of additional plant based products into our shopping baskets during January, we can help people understand the importance of choosing a few more fair trade products to support livelihoods of people living in cocoa farming communities in low income countries like Ghana
We'll be sharing some of our favourite stories of co-operation between fair trade campaigners and supporters and farmers and workers.
Today our image shows Bruce Crowther, our good friend who was instrumental in both the world's first fair trade town in Garstang and Africa's first fair trade town in New Koforidua. In 2004 Bruce was enstooled as the Development Chief of New Koforidua - taking the name Nana Kwadwo Osafo I Nkosoohene of New Koforidua. Bruce runs chocolate making workshops and sells the chocolate he makes himself at the FIG Tree Fair Trade Centre.
Alongside Bruce in the image is Adelle A'Asante founder of Africaniwa and the Chocolate has a Name project to bring chocolate making workshops and a cocoa based curriculum to schools in Ghana. The first school to benefit from the project - Tarkwa Breman Girls School, part of the Cocoa360 programme now has a workshop with chocolate making equipment courtesy of the efforts of fair trade campaigners who raised over £7,000 via walking the Fair Trade Ways from Garstang to Keswick and around Bradford. 280 girls at the school will learn what the cocoa their parents grow is used for and understand about chocolate making. Since the average age for a cocoa farmer is 50, we hope that some girls will choose a career in chocolate and make this a vibrant and exciting industry in West Africa where 70% of the world's cocoa is grown
Check our social media all this month for regular posts about the project, and the links between the UK and Ghana
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