Empowering Global Citizens

oversimplified, it will still serve to generate excitement and interest around
the activities of the year.)

Once each team has been assigned the country in which it will sell choco—
late, the team will be asked to create a list of questions about what it needs to
know about that country. Consider the following potential list of questions:

Which part of the world will the team get its cocoa from? (The
eight largest cocoa—producing countries at present are Cote d’Ivoire,
Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, Ecuador, and
Malaysia. These countries produce 90 percent of the world’s supply
of cocoa.) This question has several subquestions that need to be

addressed:

1. What is the cost of exporting cocoa from these cocoa-manufac~
turing countries?

2. Where have these countries been exporting cocoa to?

3. How would one plot a simple trend of cocoa production in
these countries across different years? Does the trend stay more
or less the same, or does it fluctuate over time?

How much does it cost to import and export cocoa?

5. Are there frequent price fluctuations? How might price fluctua—
tions impact the decision to buy cocoa from a particular country?

6. What are the possible expenses involved in manufacturing choco~
late in New York City and, further, in selling it in another coun—
try? (Note that students may need to budget for expenses of other
raw materialswfor example, milk or nuts. Since they will be pro—
ducing their chocolate in New York City, they can obtain these
prices from a supermarket, or the teacher can provide them.)

7. What are markups in the manufacturing process? Are there over—
head costs, and if so, how can buying in bulk affect those over—
heads? (Note that the teacher may connect this idea to the math
curriculum to help students learn about profit, loss, and markups.)