Name: Joseph Zaraya

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, International Workers Rights

Date of Fieldwork: February 24, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Ayn Riggs

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On Thursday the 24 of February our group was able to meet with Ayn Riggs. Ayn has worked with forced labor in chocolate for over 10 years. Ayn has spent a lot of time trying to help stop forced labor in Ghana and Cote D’ivoire which are the countries that produce the most cocoa.

Something Ayn told us is that while making companies supply chains traceable is important. Unless farmers are being paid a living wage, then anything anyone comes up with won’t affect change. Another thing Ayn said is that big chocolate companies have previously signed agreements where they would make their chocolate free of forced labor, but that was years ago and nothing has really changed. She also told us that some chocolate companies that say they are free of forced labor and have traceable supply chains manufacture their chocolate with bigger companies that use forced labor to get more profit than a truly forced labor free company.

It was great to meet with Ayn and we learned a lot about forced labor in chocolate, and how individuals can make changes without being in a foundation. One thing that I never though about until Ayn told us was that instead of big plantations using forced labor, there are sometimes many very small plantations that come together to produce things like chocolate. This makes it really hard to effectively trace your supply chains.