BY AGNES MENANOPO
A number of schools and institutions, teachers and farmers have shown interest in Chocolate production by taking part in local chocolate making training in Honiara as part of the recent SolChoc Festival in July.
The training aimed to train the participants to train their students in their various institutions how to make local, homemade chocolate and for other participants, for their own interest for household consumptions.
The participants were able to produce new local products from dried cocoa beans mixed with other ingredients, such as ripe bananas, pineapple, lemon, coconut juice, and milk and many others.
Facilitators of the training were Floris Faalualuo Niu who is a passionate cocoa farmer in her home country, Samoa and her business partner, Oonagh Browne who is from a boutique chocolate company in New Zealand.
The two were brought into the country by Strongim Bisnis for the SolChoc Festival and had spent two weeks training others to know how to produce local chocolates.
Mrs. Niu said she really wanted to see women growers and women farmers from different provinces to be able to attend training like this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
“I’m a cocoa farmer myself and these women are the key to completely changing the culture of eating and drinking of cocoa culture. We need to involve women because traditionally, they are ones who usually prepare food for the family.”
“I’m so glad that they were happy to learn new cocoa chocolate making skills and their participation is fantastic.
“This was much bigger than this; they are going to be teaching more people, like their students, friends, and families and that’s great because imparting the knowledge is the very important thing here,” Mrs. Niu said.
She said that was about rewriting the story or writing a new story of Cocoa Solomon Islands which is very important and women are likely the key in that.
She added that they were here to empower women and youths in the Solomon Islands and this is one of the best ways that they can actually reach out to other people.
Oonagh Browne said it’s really been about encouraging cocoa production in the country to be something that people actually value as a local ingredient because of its value in the market.
“We anticipated that this training would inspire the local people because cocoa is good for them and is also grown here.
“Also by them connecting with the ingredients, it will give them the motivation to farm it and grow it better,” she said.
