As part of ICI’s six year strategic plan from 2015 to 2020, with the overarching goal of improving the lives of children and reducing child labour in cocoa-growing communities, ICI desires to facilitate responsible supply chain management. This we hope to achieve by ensuring enhanced certification, training of supply chain actors, and children’s rights and business principles among others.
ICI’s engagement along the cocoa supply-chain is done through the setting-up and management of Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS). As a structure embedded in the supply chain of chocolate and cocoa companies, it identifies and remediates cases of child labour.
The system is based on the presence of facilitators within cocoa-growing communities who raise awareness on the issue of child labour, identify cases and request remediation actions that are implemented by ICI together with the chocolate company and cocoa purchasing company.
The idea behind the use of community members as CFs for the CLMRS projects is to ensure the sustainability of the the impacts made with the farmers. These CFs gain an indepth knowledge on child labour in cocoa, child safeguarding practices and awareness raising methods which serve as great benefits to the farmer societies to which they belong and the community at large. As part of the process, these CFs also build their capacity on data gathering skills through the use of the system.
The training of these facilitators are based on the training material developed by ICI and formally approved by the National Steering Committee on Child Labour (NSCCL). As part of this approach, the community facilitators are also mandated to gather data from the communities which is done through a database managed by ICI from which systematic analysis can be conducted and remediation strategies refined.
“Nestle working with ICI, to me, is strategic for us. The work of ICI fits into our core pillars of Better farming, Better cocoa and Better lives.” Fred Kukubor, Nestle Cocoa Plan Manager.