Child slavery is a tragic world plague especially in Africa where the chocolate industry is booming. Monday, January 31st marked the day the Hershey company made its commitment to buy slave-free cocoa for its chocolate, meaning that the cocoa attained was not harvested by child slaves.

Hershey’s was recently being pressured by social media buzz about The chocolate giant; a campaign called Raise the Bar: Hershey Coalition is the source of all this buzz. Hershey’s is known as one of the worst offenders in advocating farms that use slave labor including child slaves.

Hershey’s isn’t alone, however, Mars was recently pressured to change their dastardly ways after being a supporter of the same farms and such using child labor.

Since the public outcry of slave labor nearly ten years ago, all major chocolate companies were made to promise that they would help end slave trafficking and child labor in Africa’s Ivory Coast. At the time, Hershey’s had made almost no progress in its attempts to keep their promise.

Raise the Bar decided to attack via Facebook and Change.org and attack they did. The group generated over 50,000 signatures on change.org, which indeed created a buzz about the company. Supporters of the group blitzkrieged Hershey’s Facebook page, flooding it with negative messages and ill will toward the company. Over 100,000 letters were generated and hand delivered to the company by supporters dressed in costume on Halloween.

After all the hard work by the group, Hershey’s has decided to comply to it’s agreement and now will only buy cocoa from slave-free farms.