Cocoa farmer Adelaju Olaleye leans against the wall of her house in Oke-Agbede Isale, a village in Nigeria’s southwestern cocoa-growing region. Photo: George Osodi/Panos for Oxfam America

Sweet news today for chocolate lovers: the biggest chocolate maker in the world, Mondelez International, has agreed to take steps to address inequality facing women in their cocoa supply chains—thanks to pressure from customers like you.

More than 100,000 people around the world joined Oxfam’s campaign, signing petitions and taking action to urge Mondelez and its competitors to tackle the hunger, poverty, and unequal pay facing many women cocoa farmers and workers. You also made your voices heard by sending messages to the companies on Facebook and Twitter.

One of the images posted to Mondelez’s Facebook page by Oxfam supporters. Pictured: Amir Gorjifard of the Oxfam Club at Grinnell College. Photo: Mary Zheng

Today’s announcement by Mondelez follows commitments last month by Mars and Nestlé to address these issues. Together, Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé buy more than 30 percent of the world’s cocoa—so changes in their policies could have huge effects for cocoa farmers and their families.

“Empowering women cocoa farmers has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people, some of whom are earning less than $2 a day,” said Judy Beals, manager of Oxfam’s Behind the Brands campaign. “We hope that the steps taken by Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé offer an example to the rest of the food and beverage industry that consumers are paying attention to how companies impact the communities they work in.”

Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé are now taking the first steps to commit to the empowerment of women and to find out how women are being treated in their supply chains. All have agreed to publish the data from first stage impact assessments in one year’s time and to publish concrete action plans to address the issues. Mondelez will also sign on to the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles later this month, becoming the first of the three major chocolate companies to do so. Learn more about companies’ commitments.

Oxfam will make sure that these companies stick to their promises, but we can’t do it without you. We’ll put out progress reports so consumers and supporters can keep track and hold Mars, Mondelez, and Nestle to their word. You can also stay informed and take further actions through Oxfam’s Behind the Brands scorecard; we’ll be updating this online tool in real time so you can see how the giant companies that make your favorite brands (chocolate and otherwise) measure up.

Sarah Livingston is Oxfam America’s internal communications officer. Like many other Oxfam America staffers, she works out of our headquarters in downtown Boston.

Monday was a horrific day for the city of Boston, and the world. As two bombs ripped through crowds gathered near the marathon finish line, our hearts broke. My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this tragedy, their families, and everyone whose healing journey is just beginning.

I was at the marathon Monday afternoon, arriving just minutes before the explosions, to meet my fiancé for lunch. The sidewalks were full of people from around the world: families on spring break, parents with little ones in tow, boosted up on their shoulders for a better view of the finish line. I saw groups from Kenya, Mexico, and Canada, decked out in their national gear, with flags waving. These expressions of national pride and celebration are a sobering reminder of what yesterday was all about: The world coming together to celebrate athleticism, strength and endurance, and the charitable causes of the runners.

We didn’t stay long on the sidewalk near the finish line. In fact, we missed the moment when expressions of joy and accomplishment turned to panic. Minutes before the bombs went off, we opted to go into a restaurant for lunch. That was when we heard the explosions. The scene that followed was chaos: people frantically running, screaming, and trying to get out of harm’s way—unsure if such a location even existed.

I’m reminded that for a moment, I felt a taste of what many of our sisters and brothers around the world experience in conflict situations. I thought of places like Syria, where the threat of violence is a daily reality, forcing more than a million people to flee their homes.

This week we were also reminded of the terrifying power of hate. Fortunately, the story doesn’t end here. We can resolve to live in the even greater power of love: Continuing the fight for justice, working to right the wrongs that exist in our world, and building pathways toward peace.

Photo: Sarah Kalloch/Oxfam America

Yesterday, on the hot, wind-blown sands of Miami Beach, we organized a race. As the inspiring riffs of “Eye of the Tiger” blared from our boombox, I helped set up a race track, cut gossamer, and plant flags. Then Miami-based Oxfam volunteers Ed, Julian, and Alma donned sweatbands, sneakers, tube socks and t-shirts for their sprint down the beach, while Pua and Marli held signs and cheered them on.

Their passionate voices joined thousands of others from the US and around the world who helped Oxfam launch our Behind the Brands scorecard. The scorecard digs deeper into the policies of the world’s 10 biggest food companies on issues from fair pay to women’s rights, and scores them on what they’re doing well—or could be doing better.

Our focus yesterday was on cocoa, the key ingredient in everyone’s favorite candy and a crop grown by millions of small-holder farmers around the world. Just steps away from our race, at the Fontainebleau Hotel, executives from major sweets companies—including Mars, Mondelez, and Nestle, all featured on the scorecard—met for the National Confectioners Association Annual Conference. While their top brass dined on decadent candy treats, our intrepid group staged the “race to the top” right outside as a reminder for food companies to use their incredible power to help end poverty.

Photo: Sarah Kalloch/Oxfam America

Inside the hotel, various top executives spoke at the NCA Conference. They focused on the future of chocolate—from sustainability to health and wellness to taste.

For Oxfam, the future of chocolate has to include farmers. Cocoa doesn’t grow in luxury hotels on Miami Beach—it grows in Ghana, in Ivory Coast, in Ecuador, in Indonesia. And while cocoa does in fact grow on trees, someone has to plant that tree, nurture it, pick the pods and process them; very hard work that cocoa farmers, many of whom are women, do every day.

Sure, as our race ended to the tune of “Chariots of Fire” we may have looked a tiny bit silly. But our goal was serious: to encourage globally known brands like Mars, Mondelez, and Nestle (makers of products like Crunch, Oreos, M&M’s, and more) to put women cocoa producers first. Just as we raced down that beach yesterday, it’s time for the three of them to start a similar sprint to the top of Oxfam’s Behind the Brands scorecard, and use their power to support the communities they source from worldwide.

Photo: Sarah Kalloch/Oxfam America

Emily Bhatti is Oxfam America’s Media Relations Coordinator

On my first visit to New Orleans, I arrived with over 150,000 visitors, football fans, and Mardi Gras party goers. The Super Bowl drew the eyes of the nation to this city in southern Louisiana, but most paid little attention to the ongoing struggles of the area’s long-suffering residents.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region are no strangers to disasters; from Hurricane Katrina, to Hurricane Rita, the BP oil spill, and the most recent Hurricane Isaac, this region has seen its fair share of struggles. Oxfam America has been working in the Gulf Coast since before Katrina and with our local partners we have fought to not only restore the area but better prepare it for future disasters.

It would have been easy for me to go along with the party in the Big Easy, throw on some beads, order a big plate of crawfish, listen to the music, and have a good time. But I knew what many of the other party goers didn’t know: There is still work to be done.

Completely different world

So instead I went to Plaquemines Parish, where I was soon in a completely different world. The level of destruction was staggering; from boats floating on fields of grass, to vacant homes and silent streets. During Hurricane Isaac in August 2012 flood waters rose almost 14 feet in some areas, damaging hundreds of homes and displacing many.

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Philomena Addo

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Addo, 54, a widow and mother of three, lost her farmland to a gold mine and became an activist order to represent her community in negotiations with the mining company. Photo: Jeff Deutsch/Oxfam America

Since today, December 10, is international Human Rights Day, I am just reading over a short history of the drafting of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted on this date in 1948. Despite the fact that the UDHR is a “declaration” and not a formal binding treaty, it has served as the foundation of the modern human rights movement: Every time a country references one of its articles in a constitution, or cites it in a legal decision in a court, the UDHR continues to gather strength and move the world to a place where there are no excuses for violations of basic freedoms.

The notion of basic rights is behind our work at Oxfam, so I am also thinking about those people we work with who are fighting for their own rights, and those of others, every day. Here are just three examples that stand out:

1. Philomena Addo, a local political representative in a small town in Ghana, told me last year that she is negotiating with mining companies from a position of strength, now that she understands her basic right to be consulted: “Now they know if they want to work here they need to come and ask for our consent. Now they recognize we know our rights, and that is why they are respecting us.”

2. Ines Santizo, working in Guatemala to help women survivors of domestic violence to understand their basic rights to live free from violence. She told me that she tries to teach women three things about themselves: “Who I am, what I am worth, and what I am capable of doing.”

3. The courageous people and organizations involved in Oxfam’s worker’s rights program in the US: Some of the most basic rights in the UDHR do not apply to farmworkers in the US, such as the right to a basic minimum wage, for example. The right to form a labor union (Article 23) is also routinely denied.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the US representative on the UN committee that wrote the UDHR, she said that in the field of human rights “to stand still is to retreat.” This is one of the reasons Oxfam places the basic rights of people at the center of our work, and why we won’t stop working on them.

Before the arrival of my son last year, I had big plans for the kind of child I would raise. He would be an excellent eater, eager to consume whatever I offered him. But reality intervened: At 16 months, he poked suspiciously at anything resembling a vegetable.

With my sights set on our upcoming Thanksgiving dinner—and a vision for my little cherub to join us for our annual family feast—I sought the advice of author Karen Le Billon. In her book French Kids Eat Everything, she recounts her family’s food and cultural immersion from a year living in France.

The French have a strong culture of food. More than just feeding their children for nourishment, they consider teaching kids about food to be a critical part of their early education. The unwritten rules of eating in France challenge Le Billon to rethink her approach, as she assumes greater ownership of deciding what and when her kids eat. She and her husband and kids eat together; they offer the children a wide range of dishes, cheerfully insisting that they try what’s served, all the while instilling good table manners and patience for slower-paced meals.

At first the children protest, and Le Billon admits to failed attempts. However, with persistence and enthusiasm, both of her young children happily enjoy fresh, healthy, and diverse meals.

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Michael Roberts and Tracy Kuhns on the canal behind their house in Lafitte, LA. Photo: Ilene Perlman/Oxfam America

Last week I took a memorable ride in a very small boat. The flat-bottomed skiff belonged to Tracy Kuhns and Michael Roberts, leaders of Oxfam’s partner organization GO FISH, who keep it moored alongside their shrimping boat on the canal that borders their backyard.

In Lafitte, LA, where Kuhns and Roberts live, these canals are like streets, connecting families to one another and workers to their jobs. Neighbors waved to us as we cast off for a short trip from the nearby Mississippi River to the marsh-fringed Barataria Bay.

For generations, families in Lafitte and the surrounding communities have earned a living by harvesting fish, shrimp, and oysters from these waters. And until 2010—when the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill dumped millions of gallons into the Louisiana bayou—it seemed like the next generation would, too.

“My grandson has been going trawling since he was 18 months old. The boy can fish,” Kuhns told me proudly as Roberts steered the boat out under the wide, cloud-streaked sky. “Before the oil spill, he never even thought about doing anything else.”

Now, Kuhns and Roberts say, the spill has caused lasting, perhaps irreparable, damage to a resource already threatened by pollution and coastal erosion.

“Barataria Bay was ground zero for all of that oil,” said Kuhns, who witnessed layers of black sludge floating to the surface. Since then, she estimated, “our shrimp [harvest] is down by 60 to 70 percent. Fish and crabs, same thing.”

Last Thursday, BP pled guilty in a criminal case brought by the US Department of Justice. The company agreed to pay $4.5 billion in fines for its conduct leading up to the oil spill, the largest environmental disaster in US history. The verdict marks a step forward, but there is still much more to be done, including resolution of up to tens of billions more in civil penalties and damages from BP and potentially its business partners for violations of the Oil Pollution Act and Clean Water Act.

“We still have to repair the damage done to vital and fragile ecosystems, and to the thousands of families who live and work along the coastline,” said Oxfam’s Jeffrey Buchanan. (Read his latest post on BP here.) “We need to ensure the fines from this tragedy can be invested in strengthening their future.”

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In my quest to be the best-informed citizen I can be, I, like much of America, have been glued to the recent presidential debates. I’m smart enough to recognize that in addition to the actual debating of important issues, there’s a certain amount of gamesmanship and strategy employed by candidates at these events. However, like many people, I’ve been dismayed and disappointed with the blatant careless attitude both candidates (and their spokespeople) have had with being truthful and accurate. Trustworthiness, I would think, is the most basic quality a candidate for any office would want to display when given the chance.  Sadly, it seems this year that bluster is better strategy than honesty.

To prove my theory that I’m not the only one who feels this way, Oxfam supporter and cellist Ben Sollee released a new video today for his very timely song, “A Few Honest Words”.

“Like nearly everyone,” explained Ben, “my attention this week has been focused on Sandy and all of her devastating effects … There are so many people dealing with fundamental challenges in their lives at this moment: food, shelter, clean water, etc. These are things that are not debatable or points of policy; they are human needs. And as the country inevitably shifts its gaze back to the final stretch of the election, I’m hoping we can keep the human-to-human conversation going.”

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Today, we’re joining our partners at Blog Action Day and thousands of others worldwide to pay tribute to the power of community. The 2012 Blog Action Day theme, “the power of we,” is “a celebration of people working together to make a positive difference in the world, either for their own communities or for people they will never meet.”

At Oxfam America, we know just how much those collaborative efforts matter. Around the world, our programs to solve poverty and hunger are often led by local men and women who are working together to improve their own lives. Here in the US, our supporters also help raise awareness about these efforts and inspire others to take action. Sometimes those two groups even come together, as you’ll see in some of the photos below—and when they do, the results can be astonishing.

So in honor of “the power of we,” here are five Oxfam photos that we think best capture the spirit of community:

1.   Sharing solutions to hunger

Selas Samson Biru, center, a farmer from Tigray, Ethiopia, compares crops with Sonia Kendrick, left, and Linda Barnes, right, both Iowa farmers and Oxfam Sisters on the Planet ambassadors. In honor of World Food Day last year, Oxfam brought women farmers like Biru to the US to meet their American counterparts and talk about shared solutions to global hunger. Photo: Ilene Perlman/Oxfam America

2.   Pooling resources

Local women in Banakoro, Mali, during a weekly meeting of their community savings and lending group, which they call Sabougnuma, or “good deed.” Oxfam’s Saving for Change program helps poor people in five countries start and run their own village savings groups, which act as community banks and can make loans to members in need. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America

3.   Lending a hand

NFL superstar wide receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin (facing away from camera) help with community rebuilding efforts during a visit to Tigray, Ethiopia, with Oxfam earlier this year. Inspired by their travels, Boldin and Fitzgerald recently launched a fundraising campaign to help Ethiopian communities recover from last year’s drought and food crisis. Photo: Audra Melton/Oxfam America

4.   Providing for the next generation

Marlith Amasifuen, shown here with her son Bryan, is one of 30 indigenous women from Aviación, Peru, who work together to maintain a shared garden deep in the Amazon forest. With Oxfam’s support, the women cultivate the same traditional crops that their Kichwa ancestors once grew, protecting their families from crop loss caused by climate change and providing a steady food source for their children.  Photo: Percy Ramírez/Oxfam America

5.  Educating friends and neighbors

More than 200 people participated in an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet® event in New York City in 2011. Nearly 40 years after the first Oxfam America Hunger Banquet, this memorable, interactive event continues to educate Americans about the causes of hunger and poverty; thousands of people around the country host or attend local Hunger Banquets each year. Photo: Nicole Kindred/Oxfam America

An Oxfam runner proudly shows off her medal after completing the 2010 London Marathon. Photo: Jonathan Evans/Oxfam

Would you run 26.2 miles to fight hunger and poverty? Several Oxfam America supporters will be doing just that in the upcoming 2012 ING New York City Marathon. In the second part of our interview (read part one), team members share some fundraising tips and talk about the extra motivation that comes from racing for a good cause.

How are you getting friends and family involved in your efforts?

Tara Weir: The vast majority of my fundraising has been through social media. I [post] updates on Facebook frequently about my cause and send out emails to family and friends. So far I have had a lot of success! I also have an awesome group of friends and family that are supporting me.

Clara Herrero: I’m writing letters to family and friends as well as posting updates on my training to Facebook and Twitter. Later this month, I’m planning a dinner party for friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors—the menu will be food from a country where Oxfam works.  Oxfam works in more than 90 different countries so it’s hard to decide! I will ask everyone attending the dinner to donate $5-$10.

Andrea Henning: I have created a fundraising web page and have been using social media to get the word out. I also have a birthday coming up and plan to ask my friends and family to donate any money that they would’ve spent on a gift and/or celebration to my fundraising campaign.

Why should others dedicate a race or walk to Oxfam this fall, whether the 2012 ING New York City Marathon or another event?

James Hare: Setting a challenging goal and reaching it is immensely satisfying. Doing this while raising money for a good cause is even more satisfying.

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