Red Emma’s

Did you know that Bolivia’s largest chocolate company is a cooperative? Georgetown sociologist Kevin Healy has just returned for a lengthy stint working with the farmers of the El Ceibo farmers cooperative in El Alto, and will share stories and lessons learned from one of Bolivia’s greatest cooperative success stories. El Ceibo is a producer cooperative and its Aymara, Quechua and Moseten peasant members grow the beans with organic technology in the Amazon rainforest and process them into chocolate products high in the Andes at their industry in the city of El Alto. The enterprise has been scaling up the value chain from farm to factory over three decades to become the country’s largest chocolate company with national as well as export markets including Whole Foods. Come and learn about this innovative and successful self-managed industry which achieves both environmental and social goals for its 1,200 members.Kevin Healy is Development Sociologist who teaches at Georgetown University and is the author of two books on Bolivia.