"Together, we can build a vibrant community that amplifies voices, drives change, and creates lasting impact for cocoa farmers and the world."
About
Who We Are
Join the Chocolution is a community-led initiative challenging the global cocoa industry’s ongoing legacy of exploitation and inequality.
We bring together chocolate lovers, cocoa farmers, makers, and organisations who believe chocolate should not only taste good — it should do good, too. Through events, education, and storytelling, we’re working to elevate the voices of cocoa-growing communities and shift the power structures that still shape the industry.
Our Mission
What we stand for:
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Challenging colonial legacies and the imbalance of power in cocoa
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Supporting equitable wages and better working conditions for farmers
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Advocating for sustainable, community-led environmental practices
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Prioritising social impact — not charity — in cocoa-growing regions
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Creating space for cocoa farmers to lead the conversation
Why Decolonising Cocoa Matters
The cocoa industry was built on colonialism — and its structures still exist today.
From land ownership to labour practices, cocoa farmers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia remain excluded from decisions that shape their futures.
We believe that decolonising cocoa means:
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Naming the injustices that persist
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Shifting power and ownership
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Listening to and learning from those directly affected
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Supporting cocoa farmers to lead systemic change — not simply participate in someone else’s plan
Key Issues We’re Addressing
1
Social Impact
We support community-led solutions, that address education, healthcare, other and dignity at the centre.
2
Child Labour
We advocate for ending child labor while supporting parents in unfair conditions and holding corporations accountable for their role in creating them.
3
Environment
There is no one-fits-all approach. cocoa must be grown in ways that protect the environment and respect local knowledge, priorities and context.
4
Equitable Pay
Farmers deserve to be paid well for their hard work and knowledge. We push for systems that stop keeping farmers in poverty.
Our Approach
We are not a finished organisation. We’re a growing, living movement.
Join the Chocolution is shaped by its members — especially those in cocoa-growing regions. We believe in:
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Listening before acting
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Transparency over empty claims
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Joyful resistance and creative action
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Learning, evolving, and co-creating
Shaped by the People I’ve Met
My name is Lynn. I’m based in the East of England and I’ve been working in chocolate for nearly 15 years.
My commitment to people living in poverty began in 1989, when I first encountered ATD Fourth World — a movement working alongside families experiencing long-term poverty and exclusion. I didn’t expect to find echoes of those same injustices in the chocolate world — but they were there.
The idea of Join the Chocolution began in 2020, as I watched the Colston statue fall during the Black Lives Matter protests. I wondered how many people who were rightly protesting historical slavery would go home and eat chocolate produced through slavery and forced labour today. And more than that — why aren’t we taking to the streets about that too?
This project has developed slowly — from noticing who wasn’t present in chocolate spaces and events, to learning more and more about the industry’s hidden abuse.
Everything I’ve learned from families, cocoa growers, and excluded communities has shaped this work.
I believe we can only change things if we come together and build community.
That’s where hope lives — in relationships, in learning from one another, and in standing side by side for justice.
This isn’t about charity. It’s about justice, dignity, and refusing to stay silent.