Page 27 - Earth Friends Fair Fashion

FAIR FASHION
promise that, Maya, to be honest,” he said eventually. “Fairtrade works by getting farmers to sign up to a list of things, like paying their workers properly, making sure they’re safe, protecting them if they’re using dangerous chemicals. And one of the things they agree to is not using child labour. But these families, if they never let children work in the cocoa groves, ever, they wouldn’t survive. The children would be worse off than if they were working because they’d have no money for food. There’s a difference between child labour that treats children really badly, and helping on the farm when your family needs you. So the answer is that children probably did help make this chocolate, Maya. But the Fairtrade organisation paid more money to their parents for the cocoa beans, so the parents could afford to send them to school when it wasn’t the busy harvest time. You see what I mean?”
“But children should go to school every day,” Emily muttered. “If it was here, those parents would be in trouble.”
“Cocoa beans grow in really poor countries, though, Emily. School is a luxury. About half the people in Ivory Coast are living in poverty – they’ve got less than ninety pence a day to live on. That’s
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