Tag: Suggest concrete action

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“No one can live with Swiss Chocolate!”
A campaign by the Swiss NGO Erklärung von Bern (EvB, known since 2016 as Public Eye) – called ‘Mit Schweizer Schoggi kann niemand leben!’ (‘No one can live with Swiss Chocolate!’) – comprising a research report, a guide, two spoof video advertisements & a public action.
Videos embedded above in full. Download the research report here and the guide here (both in German).

Trade justice activists not only need to choose the right things to grab public attention, they also need a good sense of both place and time. Whichever country your NGO is based in, find out what its iconic commodities are – like Switzerland and chocolate. Research what its brands and manufacturers are doing to reduce exploitation in their supply chains, and launch your findings in the lead-up to an annual event where that commodity plays a huge part – like chocolate at Easter. Choose an iconic example of that commodity – like a chocolate Easter Bunny – that’s a signature product for one of your target companies – like Lindt with its Gold Bunny (the one with the bell around its neck). If it’s an human or animal character, use animation to bring it to life and invite members of the public to empathise with how ‘he’ or ‘she’ might feel if they found out the true story of their origins. Broadcast campaign ads featuring them finding this out on TV and at the cinema. Encourage people to sign a facebook petition demanding the companies’ supply chains be less exploitative – by sourcing more Fair Trade chocolate. Show that this is possible by making and selling a less explotative version of their signature commodity yourself – by printing out the petition signatures on a giant Fair Trade chocolate bar and giving that bar to the CEO of one of the worst-ranked companies at a public event. Show that your company rankings come from a solid research report based on a questionnaire sent to all of them asking what they have put in place to address the well known exploitations in their industry’s supply chains. Categorise each company’s response as ‘advanced’ (doing good things), ‘so-so’ (doing something but not enough) and ‘refused to take part’ (not returning the questionnaire). Make these rankings public and invite the companies to respond. What’s fascinating about this approach to activism is that it can effectively bring trade injustice into public debate – how supply chains work, what exploitations they contain, who and what causes them, how they can be addressed, and by whom? Companies can get cross with NGO that do this. They can argue that the assessments were unfair and inaccurate, and that they’re doing more than they are credited with. The NGOs can then publicly respond to these new claims, draw critical attention to them, question their assumptions, ask if there are deeds as well as words in them. What to many people might normally be inaccessible and overly-complicated explanations of labour rights and supply chain economics are easier can become more meaningful when things happen this way, because of the drama, the WTF-is-happening-to-things-I-love (material cultural) approach! With this example, we’re looking not at one piece of trade justice activism, but at three or four different pieces that were designed to work together (and as part of a long-running campaign, including things that have happened since). Pretty much every example of trade justice activism on our site has English as its first language. Here, we’re in Switzerland, so we’ve used online tools to translate the comments below from German and French (with a little Italian) into English. See what you think.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2026) No one can live with Swiss Chocolate! followthethings.com/no-one-can-live-with-swiss-chocolate.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.