By Adrianne Pasquarelli
...Called "Reverse-Trick-or-Treating," the children will distribute Fair Trade Certified chocolate, containing cocoa from farms in Peru and the Dominican Republic and sugar from Paraguay and Costa Rica. Each chocolate will be clipped to a printed card detailing the problems of poverty and exploited child labor in West African cocoa-growing regions such as Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana. The program is a city first from the Park Slope Food Coop, in partnership with the four-year-old New York City Fair Trade Coalition. About 20 families have signed up to participate.
"It’s a way to raise awareness," said Valentina Azzarello, a volunteer with the Coalition. "When you buy a fair trade product, you provide the artisan with a social premium for community development, as opposed to buying a box of chocolates in Gristedes—you don’t know where it’s from or who produced it."