Divine Chocolate Boilerplate — DO NOT DELETE
Adinkra symbols decorate Divine Chocolate products, and inside each wrapper is a definition of one, plus a little history about a fair trade cocoa farmer. For instance, the absolutely heavenly Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Truffle Bar introduces Juliana Fremah, from the Amankwatia village in Ghana with six children and seven grandchildren. She joined the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in 2000, which is part of Divine Chocolate, and secured a Kuapa loan to plant secondary crops like okra and cassava between harvests. ""If not for Kuapa, I would not have enough money to feed my family or enough to sell all year round,"" Juliana said.
In 2013, Kuapa had almost 90,000 members, of which 32% are women, many in leadership roles. Mary Appiah, a village Recorder and a Treasurer at the national level, is a single mother of seven in the Enchi district of western Ghana who received treatment for snakebite, free of charge. Her village benefits from schools, daycare centers, sanitary facilities, and mobile cinema vans for farmers' education as well as mobile clinics, all funded by Kuapa.
Almost two decades ago, Mary, 61, took over her elderly mother's farm and planted cacao trees She now harvests more than 20 bags annually and receives a guaranteed fair price for her beans, along with tools, training, and resources to reinvest back into the farm for off-season income. But despite its worldwide popularity, the future of chocolate is uncertain.
Today, about 6 million farmers on small family farms grow most of the world's cocoa, but only 1% are Divine farmers. Aging cacao trees produce fewer pods and it takes five years for a new tree to start producing. Mary pleads for consumers to buy more Fair trade chocolate to encourage a new generation to farm cocoa and help ensure a strong future for the industry.