[tsl/leadership] Fireside Workshop: What's The Matter With Chocolate?
The second Fireside Workshop during the month of April, explored the connection between everyone’s favorite sweet tooth satisfier, chocolate, and human slavery today. Throughout the workshop we learned about how chocolate and slavery are connected in ways many of us were not aware of prior to this workshop. To start off with, we brainstormed about chocolate. Based off of which log around the fire we were sitting on, we were responsible for coming up with chocolate ingredients, chocolate brands, emotions that chocolate can evoke, and occasions where we eat chocolate. One thing was clear, we have a lot of chocolate experts (and oompa loompa fans!) in the TSL community!
As we finished our brainstorming activity, we directed our attention to the lovely GK Fireside poster that became a movie screen. Together we watched a brief video by Cody Maasen presenting some very harsh facts and vivid images of slavery on cocoa plantations on the Ivory Coast (http://www.globalkids.org/olp/sl/chocolate.mov). As the film concluded, the students reassembled in their groups and were asked to create an action plan responding to the film based on their assigned roles (chocolate makers, chocolate-loving consumers, cocoa plantation owners, and human rights activists). Each group then selected one member of their group to present their action plan using voice. To conclude the workshop, we all gathered around the fire one last time to discuss what we learned and how we can help stop human slavery from occurring today, drawing parallels to the past and exploring ways we can make a difference today such as signing an online petition or buying fair trade chocolate.
This workshop was the second time Rafi and I facilitated using voice and it continued to be a great experience. We found the participants stayed involved throughout the entire hour, actively communicating with the group through the type chat. Four teens, representing each of the four groups, presented their action plan over voice as well. This was a first for us and again worked wonderfully. Each group had a team member with access to a mic and all were able to have their mic working without any delay. It was also helpful in saving the time it would have taken to have each group copy and paste their plan into the chat and all groups reading the responses. I am excited to see what other creative ways we can incorporate voice into our facilitation methods in the upcoming Fireside Workshops!
