The International Cocoa Initiative promotes child protection in cocoa-growing communities. We work to ensure a better future for children and their families.
Children and youth in Côte d’Ivoire at the center of our efforts: The Jacobs Foundation joins the International Cocoa In...
Maria Sawodogo (far right), 16 years old, receives vocational training through the TRECC programme and hopes to become an independent hairdresser.
The Jacobs Foundation, a charitable foundation which invests in the future of young people, has joined the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) as a Non-Profit Contributing Partner. The objective of the partnership is to promote i...
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"Kweku and the bird" - ICI launches animation series
Kweku is a 12-year-old boy living with his father in a cocoa-growing community in West Africa. His father is poor, he relies on his son's help on the farm and can't afford to send him to school. He has never had the opportunity to attend school himself and doesn't immediately see the merits of granting Kweku access to education. Lack of options is the reality for many...
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Solar panels allow the women of Gbokokro to learn at night
Gbokokro, a village in the southern centre of Ivory Coast, has more than a school for children. Together with TRECC, Jacobs Foundation's "Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities" program, and with the help of Nestlé, ICI offers classes for illiterate adults in the community. Most of these literacy classes consist mainly of women. During the day, however, they have to attend...
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Recognising women’s work in cocoa production, today and every day
Women’s work in cocoa production is rarely acknowledged. On this International Women’s Day, and every day through the International Cocoa Initiative’s (ICI) work in cocoa-growing communities, ICI recognises the important roles that women play in producing cocoa, building sustainable communities and promoting child protection.
Women play a number of direct roles in the cocoa...
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Three Ghanaian women pressing for progress in their communities
Felicia Asamoah drying cocoa beans in the sun.
In carrying out our activities over the years, we have come across women whose efforts have been key to the elimination of child labour in their communities. Some of these women such as Felicia, have started schools so their children would not have to walk long distances to access education, others like Amina took it upon themse...
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Where we are working
Click the green symbols to visit the ICI core programme communities, and the yellow symbols to visit the ECLIC communities.
Cocoa News
GNANANEWSONLINE.COM- As part of activities to scale up efforts in the fight against child labour, Ghana has launched the Phase II National Plan of Action (NPA II) for the elimination of child labour. Read More
The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) has called for a central coordination of data by public and private institutions to ensure efficient implementation of child labour interventions. It, therefore, called for more collaboration between the private and public sectors to ensure child labour monitoring and remediation systems that would feed data into the national database to increase the depth, utility and visibility of national statistics on child labour. Read More
Ghana has led efforts in the development of a new global standard for sustainable cocoa and this is aiding image pricing of its cocoa on world markets. The standard has been adopted by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and is used internationally to measure cocoa quality level, says Professor Alex Dodoo, Director-General of the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA). Read More
The World Cocoa Foundation and Ghana Cocoa Board today announced plans to expand their joint efforts to preserve the historic flavor of Ghanaian cocoa. An agreement signed by the two parties lays out new investment plan, over a four-year period (2018 – 2021), under the World Cocoa Foundation’s African Cocoa Initiative. Read More
The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), together with stakeholders, has launched the second phase of the National Plan of Action (NPA) 2 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour to improve activities to protect children. The comprehensive plan, which was outdoored at Okonam, a cocoa growing community in Suhum in the Eastern Region, seeks to sensitize the public on child protection, build capacity, ensure effective provision and monitor social services and empowerment programmes and sustain action against child labour. Read More
According to Frank Mars, a member of the Board of Directors of Mars Wrigley, the best way to achieve promising results of growing cocoa and improving farmer income is for all stakeholders in the cocoa industry to think differently and work harder together; not only on better plant varieties and farming practices and models, but also on pest and disease control. Read More
Confectionery giant Mars Wrigley is hoping to triple its global cocoa production over the next ten years, in part through the development of better disease resistant cocoa varieties, according to board member Frank Mars. Read More
Ghana and China are working to establish a $60million Cocoa Processing Factory as part of plans to increase local processing of cocoa and boost consumption, Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, the Chief Executive Officer of COCOBOD, said on Wednesday. Read More
In the 1970s and 1980s, when multinational firms first linked sustainability to business success, the chief catalyst was vulnerability, not altruism. Consumer pressure, political boycotts and costly lawsuits were damaging companies’ bottom lines, and environmental policies helped shield companies from bad publicity and protect shareholders from painful losses. Read More
About 25 Parliamentarians and Clerks from the Parliamentary Select Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises have ended a three day capacity building training workshop on the subject of child labour in Cocoa production in Ghana. Read More
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