About vpareek23
View all posts by vpareek23:
Capstone #7: Capstone Share
Capstone is over! I can’t believe it. I was actually really nervous that I would mess up while saying my presentation or I would forget what to say. I did it without messing up. On Monday when we practiced in front of the school and I was talking really fast and I stumbled a lot. I think that I did really well. If I could improve one thing, it would be that I would talk louder. I thought that I kind of mumbled even though you could hear me, I thought that I could be louder. I felt like I could have started practicing earlier because I had to change my slides. Here is my slide show:
Capstone #6: Working on my Final Project
I finally finished my slides! I am doing a TED Talk, and I am doing it live. Some people are recording it ahead time and they will present it. I was thinking about recording it ahead of time, but I realized that it would be better to do it live. I also had to write down what I was going to say. I practiced, but I stammered a lot. I thought that maybe I had to practice more. I kind of got the hang of it. It took me a lot of time to make the presentation. It showed all that I have learned from Capstone. I asked Tyler and Diana to help me practice. Diana said that mine was good, but I felt that I needed to improve some stuff, but I didn’t know what to do. Then I went to Tyler for feedback and he helped me with some pictures. Then it started to look really good. Now to work on what I am going to say. I started to get the hang of it, but I still had to work on it. I need to stop saying ‘um’. At first I thought that I was doing an IMovie, but I don’t know much about it. I am way better at slides. I was also thinking of doing a documentary type of film. I don’t like Ignites because I feel like I have to rush to get each slide done. With TED Talk, I feel much more relaxed. Here is a link to my presentation.
Capstone #5: Answering My Main Inquiry Question
What do you think when you think of Hershey or M&M? Sweet chocolate? Delicious candy? But what about child labor? Or slaves? Those last two are not what you think about when someone says “Do you want a KitKat?” I’m sad to say, but it’s true. I decided to study it, so…
My main inquiry question is, “What are the pros and cons of Fair Trade Certified Cocoa program?” Fair Trade is a model that imports goods without exploiting anyone.That means that the workers get paid a reasonable amount of money, rather than a few cents per hour.
There are additional pros in Fair Trade. One is that discrimination is not allowed. In some places without Fair Trade a man and a women might do the same job, but the man might get more money.That means that women will be able to earn 3 times the amount of money that they would normally earn. Everyone will get treated equally. So if if you are a women and you believe in a different religion, you will get treated the same as everyone else. Another pro is that you get paid more. A lot of cooperatives offer really high prices to the cocoa farmers. Before they got such low money that they weren’t able to survive.They got maybe a few cent per hour. Another good reason is that child labor can be reduced. For example with fair trade, children are not allowed to work. They get to go to go to school. Sometimes kids get trafficked from Mali to Ivory Coast and Ghana, where they will work as slaves with either little or no pay, but even if they do get paid, then it much less than they deserve. For example Brandon [Gaille] Marketing Expert & Blog Master said that, “Many children work long hours without any form of payment – or if they do earn money, it is a fraction of what is actually deserved.” Another good reason is that the techniques that they use is always 100% So whether they are harvesting cocoa beans or coffee beans, the techniques are 100% organic. Also,there is a minimum price for the farmers. So if the farmer doesn’t get to harvest that many beans, they will still get the same amount of money.
The cons are it takes a lot of money to have Fair Trade. To have Fair Trade, you need to have someone to see that you are meeting all of the requirements, you have to pay the farmers a minimum price. Also, you cannot have children work, so you have less people to work for you. Another con is that not everyone may get the same benefits. For Example, Brandon [Gaille] Marketing Expert & Blog Master said,”This can create divides within a community because some workers may not qualify to be part of the cooperative and may not receive the many benefits that coop workers are able to receive.”Another reason is that the laws don’t get enforced very well. There is still some child labor even though there is less. Slavery is still around, too. And, there is no real way to make sure that there is no slavery or child labor. One really important reason is that not a lot of people buy Fair Trade because it costs a lot. If you make it cheaper, than you will not earn a lot of money because it costs YOU a lot of money for Fair Trade. Most people see chocolate the same quality but one has the Fair Trade Label and it costs more, they would usually buy the cheaper one. That means that less money for the company. That is the pros and cons of Fair Trade.
Capstone #4: My Site Visit
During my interview, Elizabeth Bennett told me that not a lot of people know about Fair Trade. I wanted to see if that was true. I decided that I should go to a chocolate store and ask the person if they have heard of Fair Trade and if they use it. I wanted to see if they just make some chocolate and sell it or, if they have any idea of the plight of the workers who make cocoa for their chocolate.
I went on my site visit on the 27th, Friday. I went to Chocolate Works, which is a shop that sells chocolate. Chocolate works is part of a a retail chain headquartered in Freeport, New York. I was going to see if the person who works there uses Fair Trade. I asked the person who worked there and she told me didn’t know about Fair Trade and she just uses the chocolate that the headquarters provided. She didn’t know where the headquarters get their cocoa but she only knows how to make the chocolate.
I then decided to write to the headquarters of chocolate works about if they had Fair Trade chocolate or not. I’m still waiting for their response. I think that they will not reply because they probably don’t have it. I was looking for other Fair Trade chocolate stores in Westchester, but there are none. I found that Whole Foods carry one brand of Fair Trade chocolate and it is really hard to find it.
During my interview, Elizabeth Bennett told me that only 3% of the cocoa in the world is Fair Trade. So if there were 100 pounds of cocoa, 97 pounds of it would be non Fair Trade. I wanted to see if the people who worked at chocolate works would know what Fair Trade is. And even if they don’t have Fair Trade, they usually won’t know what it is.
I did some more research. I found Chocolate Works web site and I wanted to see if they wrote if they had Fair Trade or not. I saw that they didn’t. I think that more people should know about Fair Trade. Not a lot of people buy Fair Trade.All the famous companies, like KitKat, M&M, Hershey’s, Rolo ,Twix, Nutella and Crunch don’t have Fair Trade. At first I thought that they didn’t have Fair Trade because if the money. But then I realized that they also might not have known. It’s almost as if they don’t have Fair Trade at all. I realized that they couldn’t have not heard of it because they HAVE Fair Trade. (Just very very little.) Then it must be because of the money because to get Fair Trade, it costs a lot. This is what I learned from my site visit.
Capstone #3: My interveiw
I had my interview with Elizabeth A. Bennett. She works at the Fair Trade Institute. This is her web page: CLICK HERE. We talked on the phone and I had 11 questions. It took alot I thought that it was really helpful. I got a lot of information. These are my interview questions and what I learned from it:
T.F.K: Taking a Stand
When I 1st looked at the article, I thought that it would be about people taking a stand for bulling but then I saw that it was about standing desks. If you want some more information then click here:Read more: T.F.K: Taking a Stand
Grace Lin Visit
Grace Lin came to visit us. I think that she is a really good writer. She read us a thing that she wrote and I thought that it was really good. Also that she also gave us a summary of “Where the Mountain meets the Moon” It was REALLY interesting. Most of her stories are about her childhood.I wonder if she would have included her sisters if they didn’t make her. We also got bookmarks!
Capstone #2: Sub questions and changing my main inquiry question
I decided to change my inquiry question because dark chocolate vs. milk chocolate was too bland. I decided that Dove chocolate partnering up with CARE (an organization that makes sure that the cocoa that companies buy 100% certified cocoa). Now I had to work on sub questions. Here they are:
- Are there any other organizations that also partner up with CARE?
- Are there any types of chocolate companies that are already 100% certified cocoa?
- What counts for a company to have 100% certified cocoa?
- What is the treatment of field workers right now?
- Will Dove make more money now that they partnered with CARE?
- How does the treatment of field workers without CARE?
My inquiry question changed, again! I decided to do Fair Trade instead of just focusing on Dove. It was much more easier this way. My sub questions changed from the questions above to:
Are there any other organizations that also partner up with CARE?Are there any types of chocolate companies that are already 100% certified?- What counts for a company to be 100% certified?
What is the treatment of field workers right now?Will Dove make more money now that they partnered with CARE?How does the treatment of field workers without CARE?
- WHAT ARE THE CONS AND HOW CAN THEY BE AVOIDED?
- WHAT IS INVOLVED IN A 100% FAIR TRADE CERTIFIED PROGRAM?
- WHAT AMERICAN CHOCOLATE COMPANIES HAVE FAIR TRADE CHOCOLATES?
- HOW ARE COCOA BEAN FIELD WORKERS TREATED DIFFERENTLY IN FAIR TRADE VS. NOT FAIR TRADE SITUATIONS?
- WHAT ARE THE TOP PROS?
- HOW CAN WE BUILD AWARENESS REGARDING THE BENEFITS OF BUYING FAIR TRADE CHOCOLATE?
Mrs.Edwards helped with my sub questions and these are final. This is how I chose my sub questions and main inquiry question.
Capstone #1: Finding my topic & main inquiry question
We have just started doing Capstone. We have picked our topics and our inquiry question. My topic is Chocolate and my inquiry question is how do milk chocolate and dark chocolate compare? At 1st I couldn’t decide between 4 topics. I made a list of the things that I might use. Here it is:
- Candy
- Baking
- Chocolate
- Starwars
Then, I took out a couple that would be hard to do. So, my list looked like this:
- Candy
Baking- Chocolate
Starwars
I had to cross out 1 more, so I decided to cross out candy.
CandyBaking- Chocolate
Starwars
Then I came up with my inquiry question. I thought that comparing two types of chocolate would be good. So that is how I chose my topic. 🙂