Mars and AMERICAN HERITAGE Chocolate have awarded $52,800 in grants, extending a long-running effort to connect chocolate with research, education and public history.
Mars and AMERICAN HERITAGE® Chocolate awarded six grants totalling $52,800 at the annual Heritage Chocolate Society Gala Dinner in Washington, D.C., supporting research and educational programming at historic sites, museums and educational institutions across the United States. The recipients include Peoria Public Schools, Western Illinois University, Levine Museum of the New South, the National WWI Museum and Memorial, Fort Ticonderoga Association, The Montpelier Foundation and Historic Alexandria. The funding places chocolate within a wider programme of historical interpretation rather than treating it solely as a consumer product.
The grants form part of a programme that Mars says has funded historic discovery and storytelling through the lens of chocolate since 2013. Across that period, nearly $700,000 has been awarded to support 69 projects from 36 organisations across North America. The initiative reflects the range of settings in which food history can be presented, from museums and historic sites to schools and universities.
The Heritage Chocolate Society was established in 2003 by American History advocate Forrest E. Mars, Jr. The annual gathering brings together leaders from historic sites and museums to collaborate and exchange ideas, while the associated programme has supported products, publications, educational resources and youth engagement initiatives. Mars identifies AMERICAN HERITAGE® Chocolate, the Forrest E. Mars, Jr. Chocolate History Grant and an educator’s guide created with National Geographic among the projects linked to the Society.
The grant recipients span institutions with different public roles, giving the programme a broad educational footprint. Peoria Public Schools and Western Illinois University represent school and higher-education settings, while the other recipients are museums, historic associations, foundations or civic history programmes. That mix suggests an approach designed to place chocolate history in both formal learning and public-facing cultural spaces, although the available materials do not specify how each recipient will use its grant.
The programme also supports Mars’s positioning of AMERICAN HERITAGE® Chocolate as an 18th-century-inspired brand connected to historical education. Mars says the product is available in tasting squares, tablet bars, grated chocolate for baking and drinking, and gourmet hot cocoa, with distribution through more than 50 gift shops at historic sites, museums and historic inns across the United States and Canada. By linking product activity with grants and institutional collaboration, Mars continues to make chocolate history part of its broader snacking and cultural engagement platform.
