Established in 1999 with the vision to connect southern cocoa and sugar producers with Canadian consumers in a sustainable manner, La Siembra has built a national brand out of their offices in Ottawa of Fair Trade and Organic cocoa, sugar and chocolate products known widely as Cocoa Camino.
They currently have 21 retail products available in over 2000 retail outlets across Canada together with bulk and industrial products sold to cafes, restaurants and industrial manufacturers. Since 2001 they have also sold these products to private label customers in Canada, the United States and internationally.
Shared Interest has worked with La Siembra since 2003. In that period we have seen the facility grow substantially. During this time La Siembra remained grateful to Shared Interest for supporting them financially and they feel that without us they would not be where they are today.
La Siembra’s recent achievements include establishing a direct purchasing relationship for cocoa powder with CONACADO and new producer relationships with El Ceibo, Naranjillo and CEPICAFE. They have also launched a revamped website to better engage their customers and held a national online competition to celebrate and promote World Fair Trade days in collaboration with Mountain Equipment Co-operative and Ten Thousand Villages.
Finally for the second year running they won the WorldBlu ‘Most Democratic Workplace’ award. The award is a groundbreaking global award that shines a spotlight on visionary organisations successfully practicing organisational democracy. The purpose of the award is to honour these champions of freedom in the workplace. The WorldBlu List is comprised of organisations in the for-profit, non-profit, and government sectors that took the WorldBlu Democratic Workplace Scorecard and scored in the top level. The WorldBlu List is a list (instead of a ranking) and is announced annually each April as a part of Democracy in the Workplace Day.
If you wish to discover more about La Siembra please visit their website www.cocoacamino.com
|
Click here to learn how you can invest in fair trade. Click here to donate to the Shared Interest Foundation |
|
