On October 31, five year old Xander Wells of Oak Park, Illinois got into a bear costume and did the same thing as thousands of groups of children were doing across the US and Canada on Halloween. He walked door to door in his neighborhood and gave candy to adults.

Yes, that's right...many grownups received an unexpected surprise this Halloween when they answered the doorbell, as children like Xander turned the trick-or-treating tradition on its head by handing adults Fair Trade chocolate attached to an informational card.

Reverse Trick-or-Treating, a new Halloween tradition conceived and coordinated by the Global Exchange Fair Trade team, was an instant hit. Two to three thousand groups of trick-or-treaters in 300 cities, spread across 40 states in the United States, participated. Making this a bi-national initiative, university chapters of Engineers without Borders distributed chocolate door to door in Ontario, Canada.

This Halloween, young Fair Trade activists put Fair Trade chocolate directly into the hands of nearly 47,000 households. Combined with distribution of Global Exchange's own glossy Halloween post cards and downloadable flyers, Global Exchange coordinated direct Fair Trade public education to a staggering 72,000 households in a single night. This message was further amplified by dozens of print, internet, blog, radio, and television media reports on Reverse Trick-or-Treating.

The effort was a collaboration of seven major national/regional nonprofit organizations, and countless local Fair Trade Coalitions, schools, congregations, and individual families. Equal Exchange played a key role in developing the initiative and coordinating donations by the four participating Fair Trade chocolate companies.

And who better to explain why kids gave Fair Trade chocolate to adults than Oliver Wells of Marshfield, Vermont (no relation to Xander), whose age is "almost five" and whose costume was a knight in shining armor. According to Oliver, it is important to cocoa farming families that we spread the word about the importance of buying Fair Trade "because it can give them more food and they can get better if they [get] sick."

Xander Wells points out that people should buy Fair Trade chocolate "cause it had farmers who got paid enough money." Xander also stressed repeatedly the importance of correcting a worrisome social injustice that he found very troubling...cocoa producing families have typically never tasted chocolate. "Some people have no chocolate and they would like to try it."

An excerpt from the informational card explains further. "Like Halloween, chocolate should be a source of joy for all children, including those in countries where cocoa is grown. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. Despite six years of promises from major chocolate manufacturers little has been done to tackle the documented problem of forced child labor on many farms that supply their cocoa. Moreover, low cocoa prices have left cocoa farmers in poverty year after year." In contrast, "Fair Trade certification prohibits the use of abusive child labor. Also, the guaranteed Fair Trade price paid for cocoa raises farmers' incomes and creates hope for a better future for their children."

Like many other participants, Oliver and his mother prepared for Reverse Trick-or-Treating by reading Global Exchange's Fair Trade chocolate curriculum for children. "The day before Halloween, I sat down with my son and went over that wonderful activity book together and by the end he was so jazzed that he was going to be giving out Fair Trade chocolates that he was jumping up and down, waving his hands in the air," recounted Oliver's mom Joan. "And I said 'Do you support Fair Trade?" and he shouted 'yes!' and I said 'why?' and he said 'because it doesn't make kids work in the farms!"

Many participants remarked on the significance of Reverse Trick-or-Treating beyond the sheer number of households educated about Fair Trade on Halloween night. Remarkably, virtually everyone interviewed for this article used the words "making Halloween meaningful" to explain why the idea of Reverse Trick-or-Treating resonated with them. Drew Arata of Media, Pennsylvania said "I saw that Reverse Trick-or-Treating had the potential to take a holiday that is fun in its own right and make it a little more meaningful. I love dressing up and the masquerade and the whole idea of candy. Who doesn't love candy? The idea of giving the holiday meaning was greatly of interest to me." Arata helps to coordinate the Fair Trade initiative of Media Pennsylvania, America's first Fair Trade Town, where he is also the owner of a Fair Trade store.

Jane Zawadowski, Xander Wells' mother, echoed the view of many participants, who were moved by the opportunity to turn Halloween from a holiday when children are given free reign to demand candy from adults into a holiday that celebrates children's ability to give back...both to their neighbors handing them candy and to their peers around the world whose families produce cocoa for coveted Halloween candy. "This Halloween, we didn't just transform our kids into animals in costumes. Global Exchange provided me with an effective, easy to implement opportunity to transform our Halloween experience. Halloween is often a holiday that is gimme, gimme, gimme for the kids. With the Reverse Trick-or-Treating event, my son got to give back by physically holding a tangible object and giving it to people. At each door he received something and then was able to literally give back. It went from a gimme gimme event to a sharing event."

Adding to the transformation was the fact that many of the thousands of children participating were probably taking action for the first time in their young lives. "Because my son knows what Fair Trade is, Reverse Trick or Treating also made him into a little activist," explained Zawadowski. "I, as a mom, have been an activist and have looked for ways to get my kids involved in activism. This was a fun, simple way to allow a kid to be an activist. Xander is a five year old. Giving candy is something a five-year old can understand, on a five-year old level. We also talked about how people can work in those conditions."

Another of Joan Wells' most memorable experiences was chatting with another participating family's daughters the weekend before Halloween. Preparations for Reverse Trick-or-Treating sparked the interest of the family's articulate and energetic adolescent girls to speak before their student council about switching to Fair Trade fundraising and ask their friends to start purchasing Fair Trade chocolate. "It was interesting to me to see someone else 'get it.' The girls were starting to think 'I can encourage my family and others to buy fair trade.' Seeing them embrace it and seeing the light go on made it all worthwhile for me," said Joan Wells.

Reverse Trick-or-Treating also energized Fair Trade activists and the movement to end abusive child labor in the cocoa industry, by building momentum to make chocolate into the next Fair Trade coffee, in terms of its widespread adoption by both consumers and companies.

Joan Wells, who is also one of the coordinators of the Vermont Fair Trade Network, spoke of the impact that Reverse Trick-or-Treating had on her local initiatives. Wells sent out a template email provided by Global Exchange to her listserv, inviting people to participate in Reverse Trick-or-Treating. Because of people broadly forwarding the email to friends, she received phone calls from people who had never previously been involved in Fair Trade. After Reverse Trick-or-Treating, Wells felt inspired to start thinking about doing more outreach to schools about Fair Trade.

Reverse Trick-or-Treating provided a fun activity for Fair Trade Coalitions and Fair Trade Towns nationwide to engage a wider audience. For example, Media, Pennsylvania, kicked off Reverse Trick-or-Treating on October 13 with a festive event featuring live music and a lecture by a visiting Fair Trade cocoa farmer from Costa Rica, that was part of its downtown second Saturday art walk. At the event, Arata collected names of potential participants. Many people who heard about Reverse Trick-or-Treating through their church in Media came to Arata's store to purchase Fair Trade chocolate to distribute from their doorsteps. Arata also used cocoa as an example at a Fair Trade presentation he gave to high school seniors after Reverse Trick-or-Treating. Montclair, New Jersey activists recruited groups of children from four additional surrounding communities, students from the Montclair High School Fair Trade Club, members of the Park United Methodist Church Youth Group, and children from First Congregational Church to participate and reach hundreds of households in their area.

Another word on the tip of most participants' tongues was "easy." Parents and organizations alike expressed appreciation for how easy it was to get involved in such a meaningful project.

For some, the heart and soul of Reverse Trick-or-Treating was not the mere fact of reaching so many households, but how it happened. The event was an opportunity for old-fashioned civic engagement, giving neighbors a chance to talk to each other about one of the serious social justice issues of our time -- how international trade impacts us all -- on the one rare night when everyone feels comfortable and natural about walking door to door. Joan Wells said, "I thought the activity was brilliant in that it was something that was fun it had all the qualities of a successful project because we were able to offer people something while spreading the word about Fair Trade. There was so much conventional chocolate being exchanged. It was perfect having the chocolate as a medium for spreading the word" about Fair Trade.

This civic engagement aspect drew the attention of Equal Exchange's Rodney North, to the project. Equal Exchange designed and printed informational cards, donated chocolate, and shipped the Reverse Trick-or-Treating kits free of charge to schools, congregations and schools across the country. "Equal Exchange was very happy and proud to participate. I loved the idea of regular folks having a straightforward opportunity to bring up this issue with their neighbors and at the same time introduce a positive step forward in the form of a tasty piece of Fair Trade chocolate. For us, the thing that demonstrated the significance of this project was the many letters from the participants thanking us for helping provide this opportunity to engage in this important work. Think about that. Participants were thanking us for giving them the chance to go door to door to talk to their neighbors about these issues and these solutions."

A dialogue between neighbors was also an especially effective way to do public education. In marketing circles, much of the buzz is around the idea that the best endorsement for products comes from someone you know. But what if the thing people are endorsing is social justice? People were doing just that. As Joan Wells reported, many of the people they spoke with had never heard of Fair Trade certification.

How did people react when they received the chocolate? Molly Gilruth, an eighth grader in Montclair, New Jersey, said "While people were a bit surprised when we handed chocolate to them...they were really interested in learning more about Fair Trade. They said they would look it up on the internet that night and find out more information." Jane Zawadowski reported that "they all said things like "wow, we've never received something back...thank you! They all had huge smiles on their faces."

Asked if he feels glad he participated in Reverse Trick-or-Treating, Oliver Wells replied "Yeah, because then I can help other people."

For more information, visit www.reversetrickortreating.org.