Dear John,

Halloween is my kids’ favorite holiday. They know where all the best givers are in our neighborhood and have long established that I am to wait for them to hide away their best chocolates before I get access to their candy.

For me, however, Halloween is a renewed call to action because, sadly, the problem of child and forced child labor in the cocoa industry continues. Please donate to our campaign to end child labor today: [link removed]

Sixty percent of the world’s cocoa comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana, where nearly two decades of chocolate industry shell games have meant minimal results for farmers and their children. Despite lackluster commitments from companies, ILRF’s advocacy, together with allies, has pushed governments to embrace the fight to end child labor and moved the industry to recognize the importance of raising farmer incomes, not just building schools.

Our advocacy in support of cocoa farmers in West Africa depends entirely on the support of individual donors like you. Will you please join ILRF as a monthly sustainer today to help make sure we have the necessary resources throughout the year to sustain this work?

Right now, we have new opportunities to double the pressure to hold the chocolate industry accountable and drive real reforms on the ground to help cocoa farmers.

Recent media exposés by the Washington Post and the Netflix original, Rotten, are bringing renewed attention to the problem. And Senators Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden are adding pressure by calling on U.S. Customs to investigate and ban cocoa imports if found to be produced with forced labor.

ILRF has long engaged with and applauded the work of Senators Brown and Wyden to call for U.S. trade policies that ban the import of forced labor made goods. It is only through laws like these – laws that can hurt cocoa trader earnings and hamper chocolate manufacturers’ supplies – that we will finally get the chocolate industry to make the needed reforms.

Will you please contribute to ILRF’s fall fundraising drive today? Our goal is to bring on 30 new monthly donors before the end of year. Please consider being one of them! [link removed]

Thank you for your support.

In solidarity,

Judy Gearhart
Executive Director

P.S. Whether you join today as a monthly donor or make a one-time gift ([link removed]), what’s important is that we have your support going forward in this struggle. Thank you for your consideration – we will be very grateful to receive your gift.

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Please consider joining ILRF as a monthly donor to help sustain our ability to stand with labor rights defenders around the world: [link removed]

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