You might think that I have the best job in the world because I’m surrounded by candy, gum and chocolate all day and you’re right! I do love my job because there are always treats and I work with some great people who have really fresh minty breath all the time!
But the real reason I love my job is because I took part in something that allowed Canadians to make a difference in the lives of 5000 lives half a world away, in Ghana, Africa. I led the Bicycle Factory promotion at Cadbury this past summer. Canadians rallied together to virtually ‘build’ 5000 bikes for our rural cocoa communities in Ghana, Africa (that’s where our Cadbury cocoa is from). So Canadians entered UPCs ( the bar code) in a neat website that actually turned the product entered into a bike part. For every 100 products entered, we would send a bike. So in the end, we reached our goal and sent over 5000 bikes.
Since Cadbury does a lot of development work already in Ghana to continually improve the lives of our cocoa farming communities, through what we call the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (CCP), we already had established local partners. They advised us that that the greatest need for bicycles would be to help junior students with very long commutes to school. In many parts of Africa, distances are so great to schools that children are often walking 6 km or more per day and are either arriving too tired to learn, or not arriving at all. So for these communities, a bicycle is more than just a bicycle. It represents opportunity and hope.
In total 216 communities in rural Ghana received these bicycles and I worked with our local partners to establish where they would go, how they would get there as well as criteria for receiving and keeping the bicycle. For example, in one of the communities, students had to live at least 3 km away and maintain strong academic standing and attendance to keep the bicycle.
During the first week of November, I was lucky enough to travel to Ghana to witness the delivery of the first few shipments of bikes. It was an experience I will never forget! Not only did we visit our cocoa farmers and learn about their lives first hand, we watched 3 ceremonies where the bicycles were actually handed to the students.
Watching it all happen touched me as a mother as well. We often think about how stressed we are because we strive to do so much - basic things like shopping, errands in addition to extra things like driving our kids to activities. But we often take basic things such as kids getting to school, getting water and provisions for granted. It was humbling for me personally to see how this simply bike – can be an enabler for so many essential things.
But also on another level, before my visit to Ghana, I thought only about the purposeful nature of the bicycles we were sending and how different it was for them because it meant the difference between those children going to school or not. For us, here in Canada , bike is about fun and fresh air. But ironically, because the bikes save hours per day, they may also have the time to be kids again.
There was such pride and an acknowledgment of responsibility, that I was truly moved. It was amazing to watch the Cadbury Bicycle Factory come to life.
Certainly the warmth of people of Ghana is something that will stay with me forever.
But just as important to me was the willingness of so many Canadians to go just a little out of their way to help the lives of others.
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