Kristy Leissle, a longtime friend of Dandelion who worked for Twin Trading (a non-profit trading company focused upon groups farming coffee, cacao, and nuts in a number of origins), began working with cocoa in Sierra Leone and asked if we’d try a sample. Once we did, we wanted to know more.

This cocoa is produced in the buffer zones around the Gola Rainforest National Park, the largest area of rainforest in Sierra Leone. Five hours by very rough road from Freetown, the park was established in 2010 to protect bird species. It currently provides refuge to over 60 globally threatened species and is West Africa’s first REDD+ project, aiming to reduce greenhouse gases by preventing deforestation and promoting sustainable development and land-use planning.

The Gola Rainforest Cocoa Project (Gola Cocoa) — 14 Sierra Leoneans and one Brit led by Katie Sims and Asinu K. Janneh — aids farmers with a range of technical assistance and works to increase women’s equity in cocoa-producing communities. Gola Cocoa is supported by Comic Relief and Twin Trading, as well as by Gola Rainforest Conservation and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (UK), which provide livelihood support for 122 forest-edge communities (around 24,000 people). The Project collaborates with forest-edge cocoa farmers to export their unique forest-friendly cocoa, offering powerful incentives for small-scale producers to create sustainable income for generations to come.