A Divine option for Easter candy

Fair trade chocolate candy for the bunny to deliver.

Thu, Mar 18 2010 at 10:18 AM EST

I don’t give my boys a lot of candy at Easter. Between relatives, school and church, they get more than I’d like them to anyway. Last year, I went very light on the candy, opting to get them Phillies baseball hats instead. I put a small Divine milk chocolate bar inside along with some baseball cards. It was a hit. I wrote about their reaction to the chocolate on my personal blog, A Little Greener Every Day.

I bought them each a small bar of Divine milk chocolate. That was it for the candy. We gave it to them mid-morning Saturday. About a half hour after we gave it to them, my 9-year-old came up with one of the four small squares from the bar.

“Mom, you’ve got to try this. This is the best chocolate I’ve ever had.” He gave me a piece. He took another piece to his dad.

A few minutes later, my 6-year-old came up with a piece of his bar for me, and took a piece to my husband, too. He thought it was so good, he had to share it. They each gave away half of the best candy bar they ever had. My boys are awesome.

It was really, really good chocolate. I’ve had various fair trade and organic chocolates before, but this was by far the best.

When Divine contacted me last week and told me they wanted to send some samples of their Easter candy, of course I said yes. The other day, I received a box with milk chocolate mini eggs, dark chocolate mini eggs, candy coated speckled mini eggs, and a couple of dark chocolate bars.

The boys were more than happy to participate when I told them I had some chocolate I needed them to taste. They loved the milk chocolate eggs and much to their surprise they liked the dark chocolate ones, too. My 10-year-old said it was the best dark chocolate he had ever had because it was creamier than what he’d tried before. They both said they liked the speckled eggs, too, but kept asking for more of just the plain chocolate ones.

Divine uses 100 percent fair trade cocoa from Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana. Forty-five percent of Divine is actually owned by the cocoa farmers through a cooperative with 45,000 members. Through this cooperative, the farmers get paid a fair trade price for their cocoa beans, and money is invested back in the community in schools, clean drinking water, medical clinics and women’s entrepreneurship.

When you’re out shopping for candy this Easter season, keep Divine, and other fair trade chocolate companies in mind. You can spend your money on a huge amount of cheaply produced chocolate and fill a big basket. Or, you can spend your money on a small amount of fair trade chocolate, help those in a developing country, and perhaps give your children the best chocolate that they have ever tasted.

You can buy Divine chocolate directly from their website or you can locate a store near you that sells it through Divine’s store locator. Keep in mind that retailers may not necessarily carry the seasonal Easter products.