ICI has developed a process to sensitise cocoa farmers to abusive labour practices and identify how to ensure these practices are brought to an end. The ICI’s programme is community driven; it is a way for the community to decide its own future. To implement its programme, ICI runs a series of workshops where it trains local NGOs about its programmes and approach. The NGOs become ICI’s Implementing Partners (IPs) and it is their job to implement the activities in cocoa communities. ICI’s programme can be divided into four steps:

• Dialogue and Sensitisation: IPs talk with members of the community in groups, about hazards their children can suffer while working in the cocoa farms, they raise issues for discussion (e.g. on child labour, or education); 
• The Community Action Planning: The community members present various initiatives they have decided upon as their action plans (e.g. build a school);  
• Implementation of the Action Plan: Community members decide how to implement the action plans (e.g. how to get the funds, materials and labour force to build the new school);
• Monitoring and Evaluation: The community forms a committee to make sure the action plans are actually implemented (e.g. the school is effectively built) and that practices change.

How do we work at community level? Take five minutes and watch our online video!

ICI now works with 13 local NGO partners that implement community projects. Their mandate is to sensitize cocoa-growing communities on the worst forms of child labour, support them in the establishing their Community Action Plan, and mobilize local authorities. ICI supports today the efforts of 243 rural communities, covering a total population of 615,000 from mainly cocoa-farming families.

At the end of December 2009, 7,076 community mobilisation meetings had been organized, with 268,949 community members sensitized on child labour. ICI has also supported the implementation of 234 Community Actions Plans. In 2010 we aim to ensure that this effort effectively contributes to long-term change by ensuring and documenting the impact of this programme. Learn more about our Achievements!

“People change only when they decide to and can see real benefit set against the risks that change often entails. Sustainable change must, therefore, always be held in the hands of the local cocoa growing community” . Peter McAllister, Executive Director, ICI.