About Us

Why are millions of small-scale commodity growers around the world experiencing crushing poverty, yet growing the essential crops for multi-million pound industries, such as cocoa for the global chocolate industry?

Powerful business interests in the North control the market for the benefit of their shareholders at the expense of the people at the other end of the trading chain.

Our aim is to alleviate the poverty of small-scale producers in the South by amplifying their voices in the supply chain so that they themselves can challenge and change consumer behaviour and industry practice.

In particular we seek to connect producers and consumers in a popular and accessible way through education and campaigns.

History

Trading Visions was established in 2003 to build on a long-standing nationwide Fairtrade education initiative undertaken in partnership between Comic Relief, Divine Chocolate and Kuapa Kokoo, the Ghanaian cocoa farmers co-operative who co-own Divine Chocolate.

The ‘Pa Pa Paa’ education pack was developed by Comic Relief and Divine Chocolate and launched in 2000. It aimed to build Fairtrade understanding and consumer citizenship amongst young people by telling the bean to bar story of Fairtrade chocolate and Kuapa Kokoo.

In tandem with this education programme, Divine Chocolate and Comic Relief co-launched the first ever Fairtrade product designed especially for young people, the Dubble Fairtrade chocolate bar “with added Comic Relief”. Dubble was always more than just a chocolate bar: it also boasts a community of young Fairtrade campaigners called ‘Dubble Agents’ on the Dubble website, hungry to change the world chunk by chunk.

In 2005, Comic Relief, Divine Chocolate and Trading Visions launched the Pa Pa Paa website and DVD/photopack for teachers.

In 2006, Trading Visions and Comic Relief ran the ‘Cocoa Summits’ in the UK and Ghana. Raphael Agyapong and Issac Owusu, the children of Kuapa Kokoo farmers, led a delegation of UK children to deliver the Chocolate Challenge Manifesto, containing the views of over 400 school children, to Hilary Benn MP, then Minister for International Development

In 2007, Trading Visions ran an interactive exhibition on the bean to bar story of Fairtrade chocolate at the Eden Project in Cornwall, gathering another 9,000 signatures for the Chocolate Challenge Manifesto.

In 2008, Stephen Amankwah and Joycelyn Segbedzi, children of Kuapa Kokoo farmers, toured and blogged their way around the UK, speaking about the benefits of Fairtrade to three Fairtrade Schools conferences and to local shopkeepers and schools in Glasgow, Garstang, Haworth, Birmingham and London

In 2009, Trading Visions and Comic Relief launched Pa Pa Paa LIVE! – an innovative new webcast service where schools can subscribe to watch regular online video broadcasts from a rural school in a Kuapa Kokoo community in Ghana.

Pa Pa Paa schools surveys show that student awareness of Fairtrade has risen from 39% in 1999 to 79% in the 2007 survey.

Kuapa Kids Community Project

The foundation of all our Fairtrade education work in the UK is a long standing programme of educational capacity building in Ghana, which the partners in this project have facilitated since 2000. This includes funding a full time member of staff in Ghana to work with a range of Kuapa Kokoo supported schools and students.

The schools in Ghana that we work with struggle to maintain high educational standards because they serve poor, rural cocoa-growing communities. The schools are remote, with few facilities like electricity or running water, so it is difficult to find and retain teachers. Although primary school education is free in Ghana, families still have to buy uniforms and school materials such as pens, pencils, books and chalk.

The Kuapa Kids Community Project has delivered extra classes and materials to the schools. Activities like the Kuapa Kids Camps bring children together for three days – many of them leaving their villages for the first time and mixing with children from other schools – to learn about Fairtrade, the global chocolate supply chain, and issues such as nutrition, health and girls' education.

These activities have also supported Fairtrade education and awareness raising in the UK, with young people from Ghana coming over to speak to young people in the UK, or connecting through online video conferencing.

The Kuapa Kids Community Project regularly contributes stories, pictures and footage for projects such as the Dubble online community and the Pa Pa Paa teaching resources.

Make a donation to the Kuapa Kids Community Project