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London Coe

What I think about: Chocolate

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London challenging us to Date Our City at TEDxDayton 2013

On the eve of the 3rd anniversary of her Fair Trade Store, Peace on Fifth, Dayton entrepreneur London Coe reflects on her relationship with chocolate:

 

There are many ways to say I love you and throughout history one of the most favorite ways has been with chocolate. It can be said with great confidence and ease that nearly every love letter written could be sung to a bar of chocolate. In fact I would venture to say that Emma Lazarus laid her best words at the feet of a woman whose call to the world sounds very much like the sounds from the chocolate bars and stashes of chocolate cookies in my cupboard calling to me on rainy Saturdays. Whether you like chocolate or not (and there is a growing cult of the anti- chocolate, I have seen them) there is a social indoctrination, a soft hum, a sweet scent, dense melting nostalgia of chocolate as the go to food of love and happiness.

Last week was Chocolate Week in London U.K. and it got me thinking about chocolate and me. Chocolate powered my childhood; it was my joy delivery system. I ate so much chocolate…. everything. Chocolate ice cream. Chocolate cake. Chocolate cookies. Chocolate chip brownies. Oh sweet chocolate happiness. Memories of me dancing in a field and making wishes with dandelions as I eat chocolate cover the walls of my youth. In my small chocolate colored eyes the world was because there was chocolate.

Just for good measure, one more time ….chocolate.images-1

At some point this changed not in a dated but a gradual way, the change melted chocolate for me. When it happened I stopped eating chocolate immediately for nearly twenty years; a miserable divorce indeed.

The genesis of this change was my mother. In a full moment, she moved my practical application of chocolate as kid crack into the theoretical notion of chocolate as simple regenerative pleasure. My mother paid great honor to the belief that a bath and quiet will restore. Her meditative crime was eating Dove chocolate during a long soak while reading a trashy novel. This was my introduction to kid vs. adult as a type of chocolate.

While this was great for her, it created for me the concept that I was not having a full chocolate experience. Yes, at eleven a true concern, a full chocolate experience. This dear friends was the divorce. I began to collect and catalog all the conversations that I had ever heard about chocolate. The social games, the historic legends: Chocolate’s romantic iconography and I grew disgusted. Questions like: if chocolate is an aphrodisiac why do we stuff it in the mouths of babes? Was chocolate supposed to be spicy or sweet? Where was chocolate born? Was the legend of chocolate as beer true? Many facts about chocolate turned out to be myth but I was still intrigued. My curiosity grew.CriolloAndTrinitarioCocoas

During this cocoa velvety divorce what I learned about chocolate was that this vegetable, this legume had variety and strata like wine, that there were strains of chocolate as varied as the family primate. That species of chocolate Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario were all different in taste, smell, mouth feel, pod color. Chocolate was more that the skin it was in.

Here is the science behind chocolate: reduces the risk of diabetes, increases brain blood flow, contains the compound pentameric procyanidin which upsets cancers capacity to spread, linked to endorphins (feel good chemicals), serotonin, (feel relaxed chemicals) and Harvard discovered in 2008, that eating chocolate actually adds two years to your life expectancy. Jeanne Louise Calment, said to be the oldest person in recorded history lived to the age of 122 and ate two and a half pounds of dark chocolate per week.

The more I looked, the more I also discovered the art behind chocolate. Stories worthy of flashlights and bed sheet forts, the Indiana Jones, Crocodile Dundy, Dan Brown stories of intrigue about the adventures of the amelonado strain trekking in the 1880’s across the world on a quest to diversify cocoa crops and protect against a chocolate shortage due to disease and how it is now vibrantly on the rise.

I read stories of farmers with heirloom and wild beans who could not even imagine magical places their chocolate would see or could even suppose what their chocolate would become. I read about children stolen, some kidnapped, all beaten to work as slaves on chocolate plantations discovered picking chocolate for companies like and including Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle.

I read stories that called to me about chocolate, forcing new eyes to open. This is how it went for nearly two decades, reading, learning, discovering and falling back into love. This new world view of chocolate made me new. And so… my life and to some degree my love became chocolate.

3207845_origAs with most new vibrant love, we tend to be evangelical. I was not different. There are regular chocolate services with preaching, dancing and singing. I want to shout it from the rooftops, sing it in the rain. When I considered creating a store, I knew my why, I knew my what but not the how. While I thought I found an investor, they pulled out ten days before the store was due to open and I was left with a space, some chocolate and a dream. I was lucky to have protected my research and a bit of cash tucked away to protect my dream. My dream was and is to change our personal and collective experience with chocolate. To see chocolate for what it was meant to be.

My chocolate, the chocolate I sell, is amazing and challenging the impression of chocolate as candy and as novel treat. It sings, this chocolate and demands, to be seen as how it truly is more than s’mores, chocolate chip cookies or as ribbons of chocolate syrup sinking into milk at grandma’s house.

It is time to treasure chocolate with wine, with popcorn, with beer, with olives, with fruit, with peppers, with moonlight, with kisses, with graham crackers and fire, with eyes closed head tilted back sweeping away drama, chocolate wants to be the amazing thing it was created to be. Chocolate wants to be more than Clark Kent. It wants to take off its glasses and be seen, really seen as being this amazing thing. Chocolate deserves it.

And in some way, isn’t this what we all or may be some of us? Our moment in time, a moment to be seen as the best we can be.

 

 

Chaminade Julienne Named Dayton’s First Fair Trade School

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Chaminade Julienne officially became the first internationally recognized Fair Trade School in southwest Ohio on April 14.  “It is so important to connect students and teachers to the issue of Fair Trade,” said Courtney Lang, the national organizer for Fair Trade Towns and Schools. “Having the designation as a Fair Trade School shows members of the Chaminade Julienne community that they can make a difference to change the global economy, both now and in the future.”
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CJ_Fair-Trade-CapstoneStudents(L to R):  Cari Zahn, Annelise Wilimitis, Will Howard and Isabela Rougeux earned official recognition fromFair Trade Campaigns, a grassroots movement that recognizes advocates throughout the United States, upon completing their Senior Capstone project.  The Senior Capstone is a student-initiated inquiry into a social justice issue. The project challenges students to make an impact on the issue and work for justice in our world today. Seniors work in groups of two, three or four for an entire year to complete four phases of the Capstone. The third phase requires students to present their research and findings publicly.
CJ is just the 12th Fair Trade School in the country according to Lang. To achieve the distinction, students collaborated with local business owner and activist London Coe. “By becoming a Fair Trade School, CJ is saying that they are committed to creating leaders who want to be civically engaged,” Coe said. She is the founder of Peace on Fifth, a “compassionate commerce” store that sells Fair Trade products downtown at 234 S. Dutoit Street.  “When kids and parents are looking at CJ to attend or when graduates are applying to college, they will know that beyond the legacy of building great minds, CJ is building great hearts,” she said.The official designation means that CJ — in harmony with its mission to educate the whole person, work for justice and develop family spirit — will continue to support issues including:

  • paying workers a fair wage,
  • ending human trafficking and child labor,
  • promoting education for children,
  • protecting the environment, and
  • respecting artists and artisans by honoring their cultural diversity.images-6

“Peace on Fifth, London Coe (pictured right) specifically, was amazing help in completing our project,” Zahn said.“We joined the Dayton Fair Trade steering committee which London is the head of, and we just kind of became the CJ branch. Through those meetings we were able to keep up with the Fair Trade things happening in the Dayton community.”

In July 2013, Dayton was declared a “Fair Trade city” through a resolution passed by the City Commission. The city earned its official designation as a Fair Trade Town from Fair Trade Campaigns that August, said Lang, becoming one of the fastest certified cities in the nation.

Inspired by this progress, the four CJ seniors began working with Coe and Molly Bardine, CJ capstone coordinator, toward earning the school’s Fair Trade certification in the fall of 2013. The process challenged students to earn three “badges” — one for creating a team, one for organizing Fair Trade education events, and one for sourcing Fair Trade products at school.

To accomplish these requirements, the seniors screened the documentary “The Dark Side of Chocolate,” for their classmates and even took advantage of Prom by distributing Fair Trade chocolate in with Prom favors. Finally, students worked with the school’s cafeteria vendor, W.G. Grinders, to make Honest Tea — a Fair Trade beverage — available at lunch.

“Through continued engagement, we’d like to use CJ as a model for other private high schools that want to become Fair Trade Schools,” Lang said.

CJ is one of two Fair Trade school in all of Ohio. It took the Capstone group just eight months to complete the project, one that would normally take years.

“Our goal with this project was to simply educate people to make them more conscience consumers, but continuing the project is key to earning the badge. What’s awesome is there has already been talk about some juniors wanting to take over and do bigger and better things,” Howard said.

“As a group we’re just happy to say we were able to bring the subject of Fair Trade to light at CJ. From here forward it will support itself, all we had to do was open the door,” he said.

ABOUT THE SENIOR CAPSTONE
The Senior Capstone is a student-initiated inquiry into a social justice issue. The project challenges students to make an impact on the issue and work for justice in our world today. All projects connect to Catholic Social Teaching. Seniors work in groups of two, three or four for an entire year to complete four phases of the Capstone. The third phase requires students to present their research and findings publicly. The program is supported by the school’s $20 million campaign, LIFT — Leading in Faith Today. To learn more, visit www.cjeagles.org/senior-capstone.

 


Local Entrepreneur Celebrates 2nd Anniversary In A Fair Trade City

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images-4Within a two-week span this summer, Dayton became a Fair Trade City and a Fair Trade Town.

 

Many are still unaware of this, as well as what it means to individual citizens, the region, and the world. Fair trade promotes methods of commerce that eliminate slave labor and unfair working conditions to provide a fair living for the people behind the products we buy.

 

London Coe, owner of fair trade store Peace on Fifth (508 E. Fifth St., Dayton) has made this her passion.

 

“Chocolate is the easiest example to explain why fair trade exists,” she said. “There are six companies that control 56% of all the chocolate production in the world. Hershey’s is the smallest of those with 6%, Mars is the largest with 14.6%. Chocolate is actually very expensive. It’s a huge international industry, traded on floors in New York and London, and is one of the world’s most demanded commodities along with things like corn, soybeans, orange juice concentrate, and cotton.

 

“It trades for so much money, but we all want to feel we’re part of this special class of people who get to enjoy this luxury item. So the chocolate companies sell it to us – but they have to strike a balance, they need us to feel we’re getting enough of what we want, but they need to make a profit. So you end up with people like Herhsey’s, who include just enough chocolate to flavor what they’re making.”

 

This allows one pound of chocolate to make exponential amounts of candy bars that can then be sold for cheap. Even more money is saved because the chocolate is harvested using slave labor.

 

“Chocolate is harvested,” said Coe, “by children who are kidnapped as early as age seven. They have no access to school or play or safety precautions and spend all day harvesting cacao pods with machetes and being sprayed with pesticides. Remember when you were in seventh grade and your arms and legs got longer, and your hands and feet got bigger, and it made you awkward? And you ran into things and hit yourself with things? That happens to these children, except they’re holding machetes.

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“When I learned this,” she said, “I realized I was eating the result of this inhumanity. I no longer wanted my hands or my money on a company that felt this was the way to treat children. Chocolate was what led me down the path to opening a store. I have this desperate idea that says you don’t sacrifice your community for yourself; contributing to community, be it local or global, is how you pay your rent on this earth. So Peace on Fifth is my thumbs up to Dayton, to a place that supports a value system that says no matter where you come from, you can be a part of something you believe in.”

 

Peace on Fifth, which celebrates its second anniversary on November 25, sells only fair trade items, including chocolate which can be traced all the way back to the farms where the cacao originated.

 

For each dollar spent on a fair trade product, roughly 50 cents goes back to the producer (farmer, artisan, etc.). If the producer has an official fair trade label through a certification board, a percentage goes there. Money goes toward stabilizing the producer’s community, often in a third world country, and promotes education in these remote areas, which people within the communities then use to fight against human trafficking to eradicate slave labor.

 

“By supporting fair trade,” Coe said, “you’re working against slave labor. And you’re also supporting animals and the environment. If you are overharvesting animals in a space that’s too small, that’s harmful to the environment. Fair trade products that come in some way from animals are produced in ways that ensure quality treatment for the animals involved.”

 

An exemplary leader on this principle is popular ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, which earlier this year became the first fair trade company in the U.S., using cocoa, vanilla, sugar, coffee, and bananas (for the Chunky Monkey fans) from certified farms. The dessert purveyor even hosted a fair trade music festival in Boston this August.

 

Just a few weeks before that festival, Dayton threw its hat into the fair trade ring officially. On July 31, the City of Dayton declared itself a Fair Trade City, an informal resolution meaning the city will look closely in future purchasing decisions to ensure support for safe practices and sustainable and eco-friendly means of production.

 

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Mayor Leitzell & London Coe

On August 9, international organization Fair Trade Towns USA certified Dayton a Fair Trade Town, joining Dayton with cities across the globe that stand together to fight for a world with better work environments, better wages, and a cleaner environment.

 

 

“Mayor [Gary] Leitzell was supportive even before I started this,” she said. “He said, ‘I think you should run with this. It’s good for the city.’ The resolution I sent and the resolution that got passed were very different in that the resolution that got passed is actually much more aggressive. The city wants to be supportive of this concept.”

 

Mayor Leitzell commented, “It normally takes two to three years to get an initiative like this passed, but it happened in ten weeks. I gave London a few tips, she connected the dots and got the doors opened, and the next thing I knew, it was happening. Something like this doesn’t have to be political, it’s something that should just be. It says that we not only respect our community, but yours, wherever that happens to be, and it ties in with our whole ‘immigrant friendly’ message and being fair to all people. Hopefully Dayton will become recognized globally as a place where everyone’s got a fair shake.”