Sustainable cocoa farming implies that producers, their families, and the wider cocoa growing community around them use modern labour practices that are safer and do not involve the use of child labour.
In Ghana, the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) is leading efforts to promote child protection and contributing to improving the livelihoods of cocoa growing families. Since November 2015, ICI has developed the capacity of 91 staff of various industry partners in child protection, child labour and child rights. The trained staff are technical field officers, district managers or account officers working on cocoa related programmes in different cocoa districts. ICI member organizations such as Solidaridad, OLAM Cocoa Ghana and Barry Callebaut / Nyonkopa have benefited from these trainings.
These Industry partners have been equipped with sets of ICI Child Labour training and awareness raising tool kits to aid and improve their engagement with cocoa growing communities.
“Because I work in rural communities, I will now be able to easily identify and deal with child labour related issues as a result from the training, without hurting the sensibilities of our stakeholders,” said Adu Gyamfi Sarpong, a Programme Officer at Solidaridad.
To develop the capacity of their purchasing clerks and farmers, industry partners have developed action plans ready to implement and review taking into account their organizational strategies.
As part of ICI’s strategy for responsible supply-chain management in the cocoa sector, the Ghana office has designed and delivered different training packages for cocoa industry organisations.
Aimed at helping ICI member companies and supply chain actors to understand the impacts of child labour, these 2 to 5 day trainings are designed to also raise awareness with others in the cocoa and chocolate supply chain.
Overall, ICI’s training support help to strengthen and sustain the efforts of industry to better achieve their mandate. For ICI, supporting training of industry partners starts from existing capacities and then reinforces industry efforts to extend and retain them. This is a process of transformation of leaders and managers, and communities for shared desired results.