Donate so Others Might... Die?

The other day, Walgreen's had a philanthropy program at the checkout counter, where you could buy a candy bar that the store would donate to the Muncie Mission.
Since the bars were only 60 cents or so, I bought one and donated without thinking.
I would like to believe I was doing a good thing.
But was I?

I happened to be with two of my best friends, who are officers in the Students for Responsible Consumerism club... obviously, we often talk about how our buying habits and our monetary support of multinational corporations (or the farmer's market) adversely impacts our world (or positively, if you're talking about the farmer's market).

image from aft.org

Here are just two stats from the Fair Trade Federation about children and chocolate:

• 284,000 - number of children in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon working in hazardous tasks on conventional cocoa farms, according to a 2002 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture study directly involving 4,500+ producers.
• 15,000 - number of children aged 9 to 12 in the Ivory Coast alone who have been sold into forced labor on conventional cotton, coffee, and cocoa plantations, according to a 2000 US State Department report

So the question is: should I have bought that chocolate bar for the underprivileged children of Muncie, when that same chocolate company is exploiting thousands of children on the other side of the world?
Yet, often when we purchase inexpensive food, clothing, and utilities for others, we are purchasing products that have not been made using ethical practices-quite the opposite actually.

I want to help the needy of the community, but not at the cost of the well-being of global citizens. It's a thin line to walk, sometimes. It shouldn't be, but it is.

for more information:
http://www.fairtradefederation.org 
http://www.aft.org/about/world/democracy-humanrights/childlabor/cocoa.cfm
http://www.heifer.org

10 ways to change the world without leaving the covers (mostly)

I posted this on a friend's facebook wall the other day, but then I thought "why not make a blog post out of
this?" 

A lot of these ideas came from the book 365 Ways to Change the World by Michael Norton.

10 things you can do to change the world without leaving the covers:


(1) visit www.ideaaday.org 

(2) play www.FreeRice.com and feed people with your brilliance


(3) Read a write a letter to your Congress people about a cause close to
your heart 

(4) Go to www.thehungersite.com and click to feed a hungry person
(5) write Talley a love poem
(6) go to www.netaction.org/training and learn the skills of internet
 activism 
(7) write a 10-minute play that is about something so utterly
 ridiculous/controversial/absurd/deadly dull that 
people won't stop talking about it for days
(8) get someone to do a Tarot reading for you (it's not occult; it's just guided therapy and just makes you
think a lot about yourself as a person) 
(9) share a link to an article that really peaks your interest
(10) buy yourself a present from a fair trade website. I suggest www.tenthousandvillages.com