Monday, November 10, 2008

Global Awareness

We had a quick project for CFC II Culture recently, dealing with the global culture and exchange.

I had heard about forced child labor in Africa and parts of Asia in the textiles and food products, and after some research through Stop The Traffik, I found out about the worlds chocolates origins. Chiefly, the worlds chocolate comes from West Africa, 80 % from the area, and 46% from the Ivory Coast alone. West Africa has a history of forced child labor, especially when cocoa prices drop and manufactures try to cut costs.

I wanted to specifically highlight this fact and cause people to question, and actually think, about where their chocolate comes from.

I used the iconic Dove Chocolate foil wrappers, the ones with messages on them like "Treat Yourself Today" or something pseudo-philosophical. My messages read "80% of the worlds chocolate comes from West Africa." "A region with a history of forced child labor." "Who made your chocolate?"

I used photoshop and simply reworked images of the wrappers I had taken. Pretty easy really, clone stamp tool to clear up the wrappers initial messages, and simple matching of font and color to insert my own images.

I'm really quite happy with the finished piece.

Thanks for reading!

2 comments:

Laura said...

Yeah I'm screwed for our next project. I haven't started yet (hence my not being in class) and I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do...I hate CFC sometimes.

Anonymous said...

It's so funny that you just did your project about that because I've been studying slave labor (involving children and adults) in the world. Did you know that 2/5 of the world's chocolate is made from slave labor?? Yikes. I thought this website was pretty good (it's about stopping slavery in general): freetheslaves.net

Check it out and I'll have to show you some info from my class over break. xo, Bek

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