Refreshed and republished on October 22nd, 2025
This post was originally published on January 4th, 2023 has been enhanced and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. |
ChocoKids is a program of The Chocolate Dream that seeks to connect children and young people in Tumaco with cocoa as an essential part of their cultural identity and as a pathway for the future. It started with a concrete question: how can we provide them with a safe space where their afternoons are dedicated to learning, coexistence, and purpose?
Through playful and educational activities, the program invites children to discover cocoa beyond a crop: as a symbol of pride, knowledge, and even a possible career. It also promotes values such as respect, coexistence, and a sense of belonging. Teachers and families have already seen the results: children with more positive behaviours and a renewed connection to their traditions.
What do we aim to achieve together?
Learning by doing it
The program runs each semester in pedagogical cycles. Children between 8 and 17 gather weekly in workshops filled with play, creativity, and action. Concrete projects such as producing organic fertiliser, crafting traditional instruments, or working on water conservation teach them that every action counts. Each participant receives a cocoa seedling and a personal journal. They care for it, record its growth, and follow its progress. At the end of each cycle, that journey is shared with the community at a fair where results are shown and celebrated.
Seeds of the Future
The program has been consolidated as a bridge between generations, showing young people a renewed vision of the countryside: a space of opportunities where knowledge, cultural identity, and sustainability drive development. The impact is also visible at home: children share what they learn with their families, improve agricultural practices, strengthen family bonds, and bring new perspectives to cocoa farming.
ChocoKids goes beyond education to become a seed of the future, one that grows in young hands, keeping the cocoa dream alive and projecting Tumaco as a place where opportunities grow. We want it to be an open door that inspires children and young people to remain in their territories, grow with them, innovate, and transform their communities.
What we accomplished together
In 2023, ChocoKids engaged 100 children from four river communities, and in just three years, it has become a reference point for change in Tumaco. Beyond creativity and participation in workshops, the impact is evident in households: children are passing on more sustainable agricultural practices to their families, boosting farm productivity, and renewing pride in the cocoa tradition. This transfer of knowledge has generated a multiplying effect that goes beyond the classroom, reinforcing both local culture and the sustainability of the cocoa value chain.
