There’s a knock at the door. It’s a youngster with chocolate bars. You buy because you want to support the soccer team. Warning: in your eagerness to help one group, you may be harming another. Do you know where the cocoa beans came from? Were the growers paid fairly for their work? Enough to feed their families and meet basic needs? Most likely, the workers, including very young children, are living in poverty in another country, and their hard work doesn’t earn them enough to climb out of hardship.
Meanwhile, fundraisers enjoy big profits, passing on a tiny amount to your soccer kids. Next time your group wants to raise money, suggest a compassionate alternative, Fair Trade Chocolate. For example, there is Divine Fair Trade Chocolate, the first brand in the world to be farmer-owned (www.divinechocolate.com). Or try one of these which are fair to the growers and kind to the earth: www.equalexchange.com, www.sweetearthchocolates.com,www.ChocolateBar.com, or www.VosgesChocolate.com. Some offer discounts for fundraisers.
What a deal — the kids raise money, social consciousness, and quality of life for families all at the same time!
A Bully-Pulpit Invitation
Here’s a bully-pulpit for you. There’s so much in the news about kids being bullied and the damage it does to them not just at the time but throughout their lives. We never forget those bad experiences when others teased and belittled us, made us feel inadequate, unloved, unwanted, a laughing-stock, emotionally drained, physically ill, terrorized, totally alone in the world.
Use this forum to share an experience you had in which a bully made you feel this way and how it affected your life. Put your story in Comments and I’ll pass it on in a future blog entry.
I’ll start. I was in 7th grade, shy and plump and walking on crutches and leg braces. When I’d walk by a certain group of boys, they’d talk in a foreign language, look at me, imitate the way I walked, make hand gestures pointing out my roundish figure. They even waited until I walked by the stairwell and dropped spit on me from above. I cried a lot. I avoided that stairwell whenever possible. I was afraid to tell anyone or ask others to walk with me. I was miserable and alone. Later, that was the language I chose to learn for my college language requirement, and it took several friends from that ethnic group to get me over my fear and, yes, loathing of that group. As an adult, I still get a twinge of discomfort when I think of those junior-high days, but I’m tuned into bullying and ready to step in whenever I see it.
Now it’s your turn….Write your experience in “Comments.”