Divine Poetry Competition 2009

Deadline : 21st Dec 2009

Top children’s author Anthony Horowitz to join Divine and Christian Aid to judge this year’s nationwide Divine Poetry Competition!

Divine, the chocolate company owned by cocoa farmers, is delighted to announce the eighth annual national Divine Poetry Competition in association with Christian Aid. This year the mouthwatering theme is “…if I owned a chocolate company...” and our guest judge is top author Anthony Horowitz. This hugely popular nationwide competition which attracts thousands of entries each year. is open to all ages. The deadline for entries is Monday 21st December and the winners of great Divine prizes will be announced at the end of January 2010. Winners will have the extra thrill of hearing their work read aloud by Anthony Horowitz.

How to enter

The Divine Poetry Competition has become a firm fixture in the calendar of hundreds of primary and secondary schools nationwide (and is equally popular with adults). It provides teachers with an opportunity to explore fair trade in class, and a theme that combines chocolate with the issues of fairer trading never fails to inspire wonderfully creative entries. Winners will receive fabulous Divine chocolate hampers and book vouchers. Previous judges include Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Adrian Mitchell and Jacqueline Wilson – the winners will have their poems filmed being read out loud by Anthony Horowitz himself. Entry details have been sent out to 20,000 schools as well as bookshops, libraries and Fairtrade groups and be requested on email : poetry@divinechocolate.com.

Now in its eighth year, the theme for the 2009 Divine Poetry Competition is “if I owned a chocolate company” and asks entrants to get their creative (& chocolate) juices flowing in imagining what it would be like to own a chocolate company.

Divine and partner Christian Aid are asking aspiring poets to write a poem imagining how wonderful it would be to own their own chocolate company. They are asked to consider what sorts of delicious chocolate products they would make & sell as well as thinking about how they would ensure the cocoa farmers received a fair deal. Alternatively entrants can think about what it would be like for cocoa farmers to own their own chocolate company (like Divine) and what this would mean for the lives of their families & communities.

Divine and Christian Aid are delighted to announce that Anthony Horowitz, author of the cult children’s Alex Rider book series, will be leading the judging panel this year. Often sighted by the media as “the writer who gets boys reading”, Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider Series has sold millions of copies worldwide with the latest, Crocodile Teas, due out this autumn. Anthony won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year in 2006 and was named Author of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards in 2007. He is delighted to be involved in the competition this year saying, “Poetry and chocolate go hand in hand, I would say, in that they both greatly enhance the overall quality of life. And fair trade should be uppermost in our minds. I am delighted to be involved in this competition and wish all the entrants every success”.

Last years’ judge Anne Fine said, “Learning always works best when you get the chance to voice your own ideas, and this competition is a most creative way to make that happen. It is wonderful to see how all these young people have really grasped the concept of Fairtrade and expressed it in their own words. The poems that really shone were those that stemmed from a truly individual perspective rather than from well-trodden notions. There were some lovely, carefully crafted poems”.

Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid have regularly worked in partnership ever since the charity supported the launch of Divine in 1998. Both share the aim to alleviate poverty in the developing world. Divine’s mission is to ensure a more equitable trading relationship with cocoa farmers in West Africa. Divine is the choice for chocolate lovers who are looking for high quality products and ethical credentials they can really trust. Here in the UK we spend £3.6 billion worth of chocolate a year but chocolate is worth much more than raw cocoa beans; and cocoa farmers across the world rarely see any of the money made by selling chocolate bars. Divine Chocolate is different because as well as paying the Fairtrade price for its cocoa, Divine is actually owned by the farmers themselves. This means they share in Divine’s profits and are instrumental in the running of their chocolate brand.

Please contact :
Rosanna Mayhew on 0207 378 6550 for more information.
Email : Rosanna@divinechocolate.com

Ends

Editors’ notes

• Poems should be sent by post to: Divine Poetry Competition, Divine Chocolate Ltd, 4 Gainsford Street, London SE1 2NE, or email.

• Christian Aid is an overseas development agency working to challenge and change the systems which keep people poor. As a member of the Trade Justice Campaign Christian Aid aims to change the current trade rules and practices so that many more of the world’s poor can benefit from trade.

• Divine Chocolate Ltd is the only Fairtrade chocolate company that is also co-owned by cocoa farmers. Kuapa Kokoo, a co-operative of 45,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana, benefit not only from the Fairtrade premium on the sale of their beans, but also receive a 45% share of Divine’s distributable profits giving the farmers more economic stability, as well as the increased influence in the cocoa industry company-ownership brings.

• All Divine products carry the Fairtrade Mark. This is an independent guarantee certified by the Fairtrade Foundation that the ingredients are sourced under internationally agreed fair trade terms and conditions. These include a guaranteed, secure minimum price, an extra social premium payment for the farmers to invest in their own community programmes, long term trading contracts, decent health and safety conditions – all aimed at empowering farmers to make their own improvements to living standards and prospects for the future.

• For award-winning educational resources that bring alive the world of cocoa and Fairtrade to tie in with Key Stage 2 and 3 visit Papapa for the latest multimedia pack and details on how to link to webcasts from Kuapa Kokoo schools in Ghana.

• Divine has won critical acclaim which includes:
Charles Campion, Food Critic for the The Independent says: “…for a really good balance between price and performance look out for Divine’s Fairtrade 70% dark chocolate – very fruity, with a good texture and a long finish”.
Sara Jayne-Stanes, chocolate expert and founder member of the Academy of Chocolate says of Divine’s 70% bar, “a mouthful of intense, very smooth, delectable chocolate … Divine is in a league of its own”.

• Divine Chocolate has won a number of prestigious awards. These include Good Housekeeping’s Favourite Fairtrade Product 2008 and Best Food Brand in the SHE magazine Ethical Awards 2007. Divine Chocolate Ltd was awarded Best Social Enterprise 2007 at the Enterprising Solutions awards run by the Office of the Third Sector and The Observer Best Ethical Business 2008.

• The UK chocolate market alone is worth approximately £3.6 billion a year: if Fairtrade products can capture even a small proportion of that market, producers in developing countries gain real benefits.

Source : divinechocolate

Republish by : NORBERTUS CITRA IRAWAN, SP - www.competitions.co.nr

Related :