In the lobby of our chocolate factory is a small note on the wall that I placed there. It reads: “Chocolove’s goal is to make and sell the best tasting chocolate in a way that makes customers and everyone involved, happy.”

These are examples of two small notes that each mean a lot to the person who wrote and placed them. Both notes were written with much larger hopes and dreams.

My note was first written in many words and rewritten over time and made concise. The longer version expounded on what each part meant. The part about “everyone involved“ does indeed include everyone in our supply chain, from farmers, exporters, chocolate makers, and our factory workers; all the people.

Many years ago, I was invited to speak at a World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) meeting. At that time a civil war in Ivory Coast, with some border conflicts, had just ended in a fragile peace. For my speech, I quoted and adapted lyrics from John Lennon’s “Imagine”. I shared with the audience that daily I take time to imagine all the people in the cocoa industry. In order to be compelling, I took a bit of license with the lyrics of “Imagine” and asked the audience on that day to, “Imagine all the children, going to school today, imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, living life in peace”.

Obviously it takes more than imagining; it takes persistent hard work, and it is hard to do. On the heels of my talk to the WCF, I outlined my vision with my chocolate supplier in Belgium. And Chocolove embarked upon a process of doing our part by buying fully traceable cocoa; traceable in every step in the supply chain back to the farmer. It would take two years of persistent work to get it set up, to get a seal on the back of our package; it was hard to do. A key to the success of fully traceable supply to the farmer was Rainforest Alliance and UTZ, who had gone before me and were well established in-country.

In the words of the Rainforest Alliance, “The advancement of basic human rights is intrinsic to sustainable land management and forest conservation … The earliest sustainability certification standards we helped develop included provisions to guard against child labor and forced labor—and to protect the land rights of indigenous people”.

Today it is easier than it was in 2011 to imagine all the people, and yet the work is still hard to do. I hope today you’ll join us and work to help the world live as one.

Sometimes the seed moment—the origin of something—comes from a time and place far away, and so it is with the founding of Chocolove.

It was a cold winter night in the Iowa countryside in the 1980s; visibility reduced by the white-out conditions of a blizzard. I was in my VW Rabbit carefully driving on a gravel road with the lights of the dashboard offering comfort and the heater blowing full blast.  This was a stark contrast to the minus-20-degree wind chill and 40 mph side winds buffeting my car. The snow was drifting on the road slowing the car with each drift.  I feared that if I did not maintain speed and hit each drift with sufficient force I would likely high center and be stuck in a drift and have to walk home in the bitter cold and blinding wind-blown snow. The ditches and all low spots had filled and the snow was so intense that only having driven home on this road so many times before actually kept me on the road and kept me from getting stuck.

As I crested the hill near my 1880 farm house, I saw a twinkling of what I thought were car lights on “my” road. I sighed and wondered who also had tried to drive this road on this night of all nights. I refocused my attention to the road and finished driving home. When I got home, I looked again and indeed saw car lights and my thoughts returned to the other driver and whether they were okay. Even though I was dressed in extreme cold weather gear from head to toe like an artic explorer, I knew that there was the risk of death or the loss of fingers, nose, or toes should I slip and fall.  I buttoned my fur-lined hood into a snorkel, tightened my straps on my mittens, and with a hearty sigh and shovel in hand as a walking stick, resolved to go help this person. I leaned into the wind with a here-we-go feeling as I trudged toward the car lights.

The snow was 2 feet deep so each step was an effort, and the wind was gusting to 40 mph. The blasts of wind loaded with ice crystals stung my face and eyes and had me turning my back to the wind and walking backwards every 20 steps. Roughly 200 yards away, into the wind and on the road, I saw an incredulous sight: a man walking in a business suit tightly holding his sport coat as if to keep the wind from peeling it off. The stark contrast stunned me. Him dressed for a summer day, with no coat, no hat, no gloves, and no boots; while I was dressed in extreme cold weather gear. I soon snapped out of it and realized that this guy could suffer frostbite or worse. While few words were spoken as the wind roared, we turned our back to the storm and walked to the farmhouse.

We arrived at the farm house some minutes later. It was both odd and special to have a visitor on such a blizzardy night. Although I had rescued people before, this man was truly in serious condition but we had no way to get emergency assistance. I wrapped him in a wool blanket and made tea for him, all the while wondering who this man was as he could not talk due to his shivers.

When he finally did speak, the first thing he said in a chattering manner was … to be continued ….