Hello everyone! Today was our last day in Amsterdam and I’m sad I have to go but excited to come back to my family. This trip has been an incredible experience and I met some amazing friends along the way! For our last activity today we got to hear from Joke, a worker from Tony’s Chocolonely. She was very nice and extremely well spoken. She described to us the mission that the company is on. Currently, the cocoa supply chain is in terrible shape. There is a lot of child labor and farmers are severely underpaid for their work. There is also heavy deforestation. On average, cocoa farmers make about $0.78 per hour, and this is below the poverty line and well below the living income line. Also, one of two children who live on cocoa farms are forced to do child labor and miss school because of the terrible pay that their parents get. Tony’s works with co-ops with farmers to raise their income and put an end to child labor. The company is 100% deforestation free, which is very impressive. Their contracts with cocoa farms are a minimum of five year contracts and then they work from their to see if the farms want to renew their contracts. Over 1.56 million children illegally work on cocoa farms and this is a problem that must. Joke’s job is to go around to other chocolate companies and help them create accountability and traceability within their supply chain. If companies can easily trace the root of their ethical problems, then they will be easier to solve. Tony’s most recent company that they partnered with is Ben & Jerry’s, and I took them over 4 years to sign! Hopefully other large chocolate companies will be more ethically aware in the future.
After our talk with Joke, we got to go to the Tony’s store and try some of their delicious chocolate. I thought the most interesting flavor was a raspberry flavor with pop rocks. They would pop in your mouth when you ate them it was a very weird yet delicious experience. After we had some chocolate we all got to enjoy our evening together with some Indonesian food. The chicken and rice were very tasty and it was nice to talk with everyone at the end of our trip. I’ll definitely miss seeing some of my friends here but I’ll make sure to say hi to them on campus! Doei to the Netherlands!