Leading Fairtrade company Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid are delighted to announce the winners of the 2007 national Divine Poetry Competition.  Now in its sixth year the competition attracts thousands of entries from children and adults from all over the country.  This year the judges decided there were no winners in the 17-adult age group, so instead have awarded an additional prize in both the 7-11 and 12-16 categories. Heading the judges for the final selection was acclaimed children’s author Michael Morpurgo.

Writing on the theme – Chocolate Makes the World Go Round – contrasting the lives of chocolate lovers and cocoa growers, there were some wonderful evocative poems. In the 7-11 age group the overall winner was Ellamae Hindley of Robert Kett Junior School in Wymondham, Norfolk with her simple and powerful poem ‘Life in your hands’. Two joint second prizes go to Harry O’Dell of Tickford Park Primary School, Newport Pagnell, and Cressida Williams of Lewstone Prep School, in Sherborne.  The third prize goes to Courtney Fisher of Harefield Primary School, Southampton.

In the 12-16 age group the top prize goes to Caitlin Guest of Looe Community School in Cornwall. Her poem Not Just Cocoa takes the reader on a rattling journey along the cocoa supply chain contrasting lives, expectations, and highlighting inequalities.  Two second prizes go to Hannah Lakin of Alleyne’s High School in Staffordshire, and Kyle Thompson of Emerson Park School in Hornchurch.  The third prize in this age group goes to Faith Lucas of Penwortham Girls High School in Preston.

The final judging process always focuses on reading the poems aloud, and this year Michael Morpurgo was kind enough to join us for the final selection, filmed by Christian Aid TV.  Michael Morpurgo has a deep commitment to encouraging young people’s creative abilities.

He said: “Children need to be given the inspiration and the tools to express themselves and make sense of their world – and this competition is encouraging this.  I very much enjoyed reading the shortlist and congratulate all the prizewinners on their style and their originality. Keep writing!!”

Charlotte Borger, Head of Communications at Divine Chocolate adds, “Once again the Divine Poetry Competition has given us an amazing snapshot of how young people all over the country are grasping the concept of Fairtrade and putting their thoughts into their own words. The results are often funny, often moving and always inspiring.  At the heart of them is the idea that Fairtrade is about dignity and respect, rather than pity.”

The winners will be receiving spendid Divine prizes which of course include Divine Chocolate, and also book tokens, t-shirts, and education resources to share with their classes and teachers at school.

Ends

For further information please contact Charlotte Borger on 020 7378 6550, charlotte@divinechocolate.com

Editors’ notes:

7-11 age group

WINNER

Life in your hands

Small tropical evergreen
With reddish brown little seeds
Look at what you have grown for me
Let us wake up and see
Cocoa farmers in Africa
Need this chocolate to survive
Educate their children – needed to stay alive
For just a few pennies more we can really make sure
The world becomes a fairer place

Ellamae Hindley (age 9), Robert Kett Junior School, Norfolk

JOINT SECOND PLACE

Living or Loving

What does chocolate mean to you?
Do you know where it comes from and how
it is made?
Next time you buy it
Make sure it’s Fairtrade!

Let’s go somewhere hot
To see cocoa beans growing in Ghana
Hundreds of acres
Lovingly grown by the farmer

Oodles of chocolate
Munched by the nation
Means nothing but pleasure to us
For Ghanaians it means good homes and
Education

Harry O’Dell (age 11), Tickford Park Primary School,  Buckinghamshire

JOINT SECOND PLACE

Divine chocolate

My dear
So dark and rich,
From a country hot,
Fairtrade your mother,
Handled by farmers your fathers,
Accra your home,
Home of the poor as well,
Famous for you my darling,
Cheated, paid little,
We must save them my love,
The cocoa tree your slender sister,
Who cared for you until they cut you down,
Little did you know then of your future,
Selected and sorted,
Weighed then gone,
The ugly seed yet to be a beautiful bar!
The care of a poor farmer,
Wrapped in coloured foils,
Divine it reads,
As your peer,
Dubble, disappears down the conveyer belt,
Packed in a box,
Ready for the consumer to indulge in its magical taste,
Opened and displayed,
Bought then…
Gone.

Cressida Williams (age 11), Leweston Prep School, Dorset

THIRD PLACE

Chocolate Makes the World Go Round

Chocolate is smooth
Chocolate is divine
Chocolate gets you in the groove
All of the time

Cocoa is their life
Cocoa is their time
Cocoa saves the wife
And kids

Fairtrade is health
Fairtrade is money
Please oh please pay more
It’s not funny

Courtney Fisher (age 10), Harefield Primary School, Southampton

12-16 age group

WINNER

Not just cocoa

The sweat of the hands,
The rays of the sun
The soil of the Earth
The brown skin and shell,
Producer, provider,
Market depender,
To sow and to water,
To pick and to sell

The talk of the hands,
The shade of a stall,
The wood of the box,
To buy and to pack.
Exploiter, exploited,
Business contender,
To haggle and sell,
For the money they lack.

The skill of the hands,
The processing of cocoa,
The metallic machinery,
To roast and fragment.
Inspection, correction,
To reach chocolate perfection,
To wrap and to box,
To ship and to send.

The choice of the hands,
The selection and picking,
The gifts and the tokens,
For “sorry” or “thanks”.
To receive and to give,
Box, bar or bag,
Worth spending the money,
We hoard in our banks.

The work of the hands,
The farmers that grow,
The want and the need,
Of the small profit earned.
They have given, are giving,
For our eager demand,
But what would we do
If the tables were turned?

Sweat, talk, skill, choice,
This is what chocolate is
Not just cocoa

Caitlin Guest (14), Looe Community School, Cornwall

JOINT SECOND PLACE

Fairly traded

Fairly traded,
Fairly paid,
Cocoa bought,
Money made.

Ethical company,
Ethical lives,
Supporting farmers,
Children and wives.

Prices set,
Cocoa shipped,
In the shop,
Right stuff picked.

Fairly traded,
Fairly paid,
Chocolate bought,
Lives saved.

Hannah Lakin (14), Alleyne’s High School, Staffordshire

JOINT SECOND PLACE

A Trip to Town

I get up and turn on the taps
I get up and walk for clean water.
I pour my cereal out of the box
I harvest my crops for food and money.

I scoff my food down
I cherish every bit of food.
I sit on a chair and watch TV
I plant the cocoa beans and watch.

I hop on the bus in the morning
I walk for miles on end.
I buy a video game from the store
I drag my crops to town to sell.

I put the video game in the console
I walk back and sit on my crate.
I turn my lights down and go to sleep
I curl up and shut my eyes.

Kyle Thompson (13), Emerson Park School, Essex

THIRD PLACE

Chocolate Money

Chocolate money, chocolate coins
Chocolate through and through
Chocolate is just chocolate
That’s all it is to you.

You want the cheapest chocolate
But you don’t know what this means
You might as well use chocolate money
To buy my cocoa beans

You like the taste of chocolate
Chocolate pounds and chocolate pence
Someone somewhere is making money
But it doesn’t make any sense

I work hard through the days
And sometimes even nights
But I still don’t get a fair deal
Equality and rights

We can’t live on chocolate money
We don’t want handouts or aid
We want the right price for our cocoa
And an offer of Fairtrade.

Now we have a lifeline
With real money we can cope
Fairtrade came to our rescue
Fairtrade gave us hope

Faith Lucas (year 7), Penwortham Girls High School, Preston

The next Divine Poetry Competition will be announced in the summer term.

• The winning poems will be shown on both www.divinechocolate.com and www.globalgang.org.uk

• Christian Aid is an overseas development agency working to challenge and change the systems which keep people poor. As a member of the Trade Justice Campaign Christian Aid aims to change the current trade rules and practices so that many more of the world’s poor can benefit from trade.  www.christianaid.org
• To find out more about Michael Morpurgo visit www.michaelmorpurgo.org
• Divine Chocolate Ltd (formerly The Day Chocolate Company) is co-owned by Kuapa Kokoo, the co-operative of over 45,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana who grow the Fairtrade beans for Divine and Dubble chocolate bars.  Divine Chocolate is also owned by Twin Trading and Oikocredit, and is supported by Christian Aid and Comic Relief.
• Divine Chocolate carries the Fairtrade Mark, which is an independent guarantee that the bar is made from fairly traded cocoa. This means that farmers are ensured a fair price for their produce that at least covers their costs of production as well as long term trading contracts and minimum health and working conditions. 
• Chocolate in the UK is BIG business, but most Ghanaian cocoa farmers live in poverty. The UK industry is worth around £3.6 billion a year, although cocoa farmers in countries like Ghana see barely a fraction of this because the present structures of international trade are stacked against the poorest.  Fairtrade is one way of ensuring that producers get properly paid for the crops they grow and harvest and can therefore build better futures.