Joe Whinney

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Seattle still wants to save the world

As regular readers know, the title of last week’s “Can Seattle Save the World? (Poverty, Health and Chocolate)” was tongue-firmly-in-cheek, but also meant to raise some important questions. There’s a serious debate about the meaning and priority of “health” in “global health.”

"Can Seattle Save the World?" panel at Town Hall Seattle

Justin Steyer/KPLU

"Can Seattle Save the World?" panel at Town Hall Seattle, featuring Tom Paulson, Bill Foege, Chris Elias, Wendy Johnson, and Joe Whinney

The event itself proved so popular that we moved it to a room three times larger than originally planned — and nearly packed the room. Not to toot our horn too much, but immediate feedback was enthusiastic. “Do it again,” was the most common response.

We’d love to.

In the meantime, we are belatedly offering a replay. Seattle’s municipal cable TV station recorded the event, and edited it for local broadcast on May 5th at 2pm. It’s now also viewable at the Seattle Channel website and embedded below.

We have a few photos of our panelists (alas, none yet of the magnificent domed room or of the audience — if you have your own photos, please share) at our Flickr site.

There’s a lot of interest in continuing the discussion. Some provocative audience questions included: How can the development community start talking about projects that are not working — without jeopardizing funding for the good projects? What sort of careers are there, or should there be, for the hundreds of college students now majoring in Global Health?

A comment and question stream has started at this earlier post (as well as on Twitter at #SEAsaves).

How to avoid the dark (chocolate) side on Valentine’s Day

Flickr, Bob Fornal

“Everybody loves chocolate.”

That’s the first line of a documentary film called “The Dark Side of Chocolate” in which the film-makers investigate the use of child laborers, slave laborers, on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast where 42 percent of the world’s chocolate production is managed by four leading international corporations.

Using a (sometimes hidden) camera, these journalists interview child traffickers in Africa, representatives of leading chocolate makers and government officials to document the ongoing abuses.

“It moves you to tears,” said Joe Whinney, founder and owner of Seattle’s Theo Chocolate, which bills itself as the only organic, fair trade “bean-to-bar” chocolate manufacturer in the U.S. Continue reading

Using chocolate to fight poverty: Tastes great … makes enemies.

Tom Paulson

Joe Whinney and Theo Chocolate factory

I just spent a few days hanging out with all sorts of humanitarians at two local meetings that illustrate just how big a player this region has become in the fight against global poverty.

It made me think of chocolate. Continue reading