“Takkie, Takkie makes the chocolate beautiful,” says Martha as she taps her hands against a plastic mold filled with milk chocolate, syrupwafel and caramel. Martha Guzman (32) from Curaçao is bent over a mold and she gently taps the sides. “I do that to remove the bubbles,” she explains.
Martha is one of the women with a migration background that works at Chocodoki. That is a new social enterprise in Emmen where making chocolate helps people to take steps, in language, work and daily life.
“For me this is new, but very good,” she says proudly. “I learn Dutch, and I practice a lot. It is difficult, but it will be fine and it is very pleasant here with the other ladies.”
The engine behind Chocodoki is Mark Goos, a 25-year-old entrepreneur with a background in marketing and communication. “I was in bed after making a chocolate workshop,” he says, filling a mold with milk chocolate, fudge and stroopwafel pieces. “And then I thought: this is fun. But I wanted to do more, something that also adds something to someone’s life.”
And so Chocodoki, a place where creativity and social impact come together in every bar, bonbon or, like today, syrupwafel-eclair. “The great thing is that creativity here is literally edible,” says Mark laughing. “We recently made a large chocolate debris with apple, pineapple and pistachio. Surprisingly tasty and conceived by one of the participants.”
The text continues under the photo