One ripple effect of this percolating economic growth is the presence of new business.
Last summer while visiting member farms of the San Carlos Cooperative, Reny, the Co-Op’s manager, invited us to visit a new local restaurant.

We were surprised to learn a restaurant existed in the Ecuadorian jungle. This open air establishment was recently opened to serve farm families who can now enjoy the occasional cerveza at the end of a long day. The restaurant sells tortilla chips, bottled beer and water, and we ordered the full spread.

While we waited for our beverages to arrive, I watched as the restaurant proprietor’s three robust dogs spent their day as only dogs can do. They sniffed, they lounged and then they sniffed some more. I also observed the proprietor’s six children as they played ball in an adjacent yard. These kids, who ranged from toddlers to teens, appeared to be bright-eyed, well-nourished and energetic. One of the younger children led me over to a hammock, where I spied a beautiful, 6-day-old baby girl. The restaurant owner informed us that, because the family can now afford it, his baby was born in a safe medical clinic.

As owner of Endangered Species Chocolate LLC, I have visited independent cacao farming communities around the world. In 2011, sitting at a family-owned restaurant in an Ecuadorian jungle, I reflected on my day, wherein I witnessed kids being kids, dogs being dogs, and dozens of young Sacha Trees—their branches heavy with scores of orange fruit pods. And I smiled.

Every good wish to you.

We greet Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. Quito is perched at an elevation of 10,000 feet in the Andes Mountains in north-central Ecuador. It is the country’s second most populous city. Many people, young and old, migrate to Quito from other parts of Ecuador to work by selling made-in-China trinkets and local wares in plazas. Squadrons of young children also earn money in these areas by shining shoes, which is how we met Tanya.

On a clear and crisp afternoon last June, we visited a plaza in Quito with Richard, an Ecuador native and guide who taught us about his country in broad strokes—from geopolitics and geography to history and economics. While we listened and learned, we realized Richard had another student as well.

Tanya stood nearby, clutching her shoeshine kit with 6-year-old hands that were worn and grubby from the tools and efforts of her trade. She smiled as she listened to Richard and his stories about Ecuador.

Despite the fact that I wore suede shoes that afternoon, I asked Tanya for several shoe shines. We all did. Once all of our shoes were buffed and shiny, including my suede shoes, we asked Tanya whether she was hungry. She shyly nodded her head. When Tanya agreed to our offer to buy her something to eat, Richard led us all to a nearby shop that sold sandwiches, cookies, candies, popcorn, ice cream and bottled drinks including soda pop.

Richard explained to Tanya that she could choose whatever she wanted at the shop. Having been 6-years-old once myself I expected Tanya to fill her pockets with candy and cookies and sugary gum. This would have been a small indulgence that I’d have happily funded. Instead, Tanya asked the shop purveyor for three meat sandwiches and three bottles of water, and then she packed up the sandwiches and returned to her work of shining shoes.

We later asked Richard whether he could shed light on why she did not choose the frivolous sweets occasionally fit for a 6-year-old. Richard explained that children come to work in Quito’s plazas after completing their days at school. They begin their work immediately and typically will not break to eat until they make their way home with their earnings in the evening.

On that particular day, Tanya may have shared the sandwiches with her siblings, who likely also worked in plaza. Or perhaps she waited and surprised her family by bringing home dinner later that evening.

It wasn’t until after that trip, which included stops in Coca, Sacha and member farms of the San Carlos Cooperative, that I realized how much Tanya had taught me. When assessing projects and raising money for Project Ecuador, we do our best to honor Tanya by:

• Listening
• Smiling
• Making smart choices
• Working hard, and
• Sharing that which we have

Thank you Tanya.

It’s an integral part of ethical trade, and it involves time spent with farmers wherein we ask what is needed.

Though often with the best of intentions, assumptions about what a village or farmer may need in the service of fair trade programming is more common than you might imagine. For example, based on an external, top-down assessment, an NGO might build a bridge for a community in need. And while a bridge may sound like a wonderful provision, a bridge may not be needed if transport by boat already works well in this community. What the community might have needed is better access to health care, and we believe a bottom-up assessment may have teased that need out from the start.

The first program of the Endangered Species Chocolate Foundation is Project Ecuador. When we did our initial assessment with the farmers of San Carlos Cooperative in Ecuador’s Orellana Region, we asked the farmers themselves how we could help.

Their answer? Help us grow more and better cacao so we can increase our incomes and grow our own sustainability.

The San Carlos Cooperative has asked us to help in this by supporting the following: training on best organic farming practices, provision of tools to help increase crop yields and access to the Sacha Tree. We call this 3-prong formula to support the goal of growing more and better cacao the 3Ts as the words in English are training, trees and tools. In Spanish, the words are formación, herramienta y árboles, but I digress.

In any language, we are thrilled to be able to support the efforts of San Carlos Cooperative. To date, we have been able to fund the training of 972 farmers in 25 diverse topics covered under best practices field training.

This is how the Co-Op has elected to allocate our support to date. Moving forward we hope to increase our support to San Carlos Cooperative into the other two Ts.

While we have been supporting the first T, the Co-Op has steadily built three tree nurseries so that its farmers can gain access to the Sacha Tree. To learn more about the Sacha Tree, please read our recent post about the Sustainable Roots of the Sacha Tree.

For those farm families who have fully participated in training on best organic farming practices and who are now farming Sacha Trees on their 1 – 4 farmable hectares, we observe metal roofs replacing thatched ones, Brahman cattle being added to the farm, water collection systems in place, and the addition of rooms to homes so a single family of seven needn’t sleep in a one-room building that doubles as a kitchen. More still and when possible, septic systems are being installed and families are gaining access to transportation and health care. In some cases, family members no longer need to travel to Quito to work. And there are economic ripple effects as well. For example, a new restaurant has opened in the region because some families can now afford to gather together and celebrate, even if infrequently.

Cheers to the San Carlos Cooperative! This Co-Op is changing lives, and we are so honored to support their efforts.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when chocolate was discovered, but it is clear that it was cherished from the start. Mayan peasants ground down cocoa beans to make a very bitter drink, named xocoatl, which only the very privileged eventually had access to. Then when Isabelle and Ferdinand attempted and decimate the Mayan culture, they discovered the valuable beans and kept them as a treasured luxury for Spain’s wealthy and elite. According to some accounts, thanks to a crafty Catholic monk who snuck out of Spain with the coveted beans the British royal court got a taste of chocolate goodness, and the bittersweet cycle of elite indulgence began all over again.

Of course as colonization swept the planet, pristine forests were clear-cut to feed the growing demand for cacao. Humans were placed in bondage to slavery in order to grow and harvest cacao crops. It is clear that recent public and political awareness of slavery and unsustainable farming techniques has moved the government and chocolate industry to action, but we still have a long way to go.

This is the time in history, RIGHT NOW, to reach out and make a difference. Understand the consequences of the your actions, including the purchases you make including chocolate. It matters. Look around, people all over the world are ready for change: from the Arab Spring to Russians in the streets protesting to our own Occupy Wall Street movement right here in the good old USA. Together we can make a positive change. In our case, change comes one sweet bite of chocolate at a time.

Welcome to Project Ecuador, our first program.

As you may know, cacao is a tree fruit that grows naturally near the equator. The geographic band encircling the globe that plays host to cacao farming has been dubbed the “band of poverty” given the prevalence deforestation, desertification and poverty there.

Project Ecuador supports the independent farming partners of the San Carlos Cooperative, which is seated in the “band of poverty” in Ecuador’s Orellana Region. To date, Project Ecuador has focused on funding best practices farm training to the Co-Op’s farmers—comprised of 1200 farm families or nearly 7000 people. The goal of Project Ecuador is to support the Cooperative in its effort to increase incomes for its partners.

Cacao farming is a volume game. The more cacao a farmer harvests to sell, the better off the farming family is and the more sustainable life becomes.

Enter the Sacha Tree, a naturally occurring hybrid cacao tree that originated on an independent farmer’s land in Ecuador’s Orellana Region. We humbly assert this tree is a miracle.

While a typical cacao tree produces 15 pods per growing season, the Sacha Tree produces over 100 pods. That’s a 733% increase in harvested pods. With such remarkable harvest potential, one can imagine how the Sacha Tree is quite literally changing lives for the better for the farmers who are planting it.

Beyond being more prolific than typical cacao trees, Sacha Trees are naturally disease and mold resistant. What’s more, they seem to produce pods year-around.

We are proud to support the efforts of San Carlos Cooperative, where farming the food of the gods—chocolate—will ultimately build more sustainable lives.

Every good wish, Wayne