“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 community”  Peter McAllister, Executive Director ICI.

ICI’s project is community led.  Working with communities, ICI has developed a process to sensitise farmers and community leaders to abusive labour practices and help them identify how they might work to bring these to an end.  At the outset, each community creates an action plan to ensure children are not involved in hazardous practices, a mechanism for the identification and rescue of trafficked children, investment in education and youth programmes and a framework to ensure these changes become permanent. 

In cocoa production, individual farmers make the decision about whom they employ as labourers on their farm.  Numerous economic and social factors influence these decisions and conditions can vary significantly from place to place.  While most family farmers are law abiding and extremely hard working, abuses are sometimes found and can be exacerbated by both poverty and a lack of awareness. 

Our pilot projects, launched in 2004, in Ghana and Ivory Coast are led by the communities themselves and provide a benchmark for measuring success and replicating practices which best support change at the community level.

Some Key Results and Achievement (Pilot Phase)

• In 87.5% of communities, children are no longer involved in spraying of cocoa;
• 79% of communities have taken measures to reduce the loads children carry;
• In all communities, parents and guardians have started providing protective clothing for children when they accompany them to the farms;
• 83% of communities have taken measures against children breaking pods;
• In 87.5% of communities, the Traditional Labour Cooperation has been revived, thereby allowing children to go to school;
• 87.5% of communities officially requested teachers, 54% were granted;
• 54% of communities had employed supporting teachers, paying them directly;

In parallel, the Sustainable Tree Crops Project (STCP) organised Farmer Field Schools on good cocoa farm husbandry and practices for farmers in 7 of the 24 pilot communities. 
  
Some concrete result in a one of the community where ICI conducts activities: Sekyere Krobo (Mpohor Wassa East, Western Region, Ghana)
 
The ICI activities conducted in Sekyere Krobo are part of the Yen Daakye program. In Sekyere Krobo, ICI’s implementing partner SCMPP (Support for Community Mobilization Programme/Project) started sensitization and dialogue activities using participatory approach in 2005. Carried out activities include community wide meetings, focus group discussions, leadership meetings, definition and implementation of the community Action Plan. In this community, the impacts on education and children engaged in child labour activities are the following:
 
The community used the ICI community grant (950 US$) to extend electricity to the primary and the junior high schools in the community to facilitate prep attendance in the evening by the school children. This project has led to the improvement of the BECE results from 22% in 2005 to 81% in 2007. It has also improved the general academic performance of the pupils in both primary and the junior high schools in the community according to the heads of the two schools.

• The district assembly -after receiving the Community Action Plan- implemented some projects in the community. These projects are 16 seater KVIP toilet facilities and a six classroom block with library, office, store, urinal and a toilet. 
• A bye law preventing child labour, WFCL, children selling at night, wake keeping, video watching at night, etc. has been put in place and the community members are adhering to it.
• Furthermore, the community facilitators and leaders have capitalized on the existence of community radio in the village for sensitization efforts. As a result of this children carry loads but according to their age and strength. Also children fetch water a day before spraying is done. So children are not involved in chemical spraying at all.

In the Effiduare District, Ashanti region, Ghana, children interviewed explained:  “Our jobs on the cocoa farms are weeding, carrying and gathering cocoa, fetching water for cocoa sprayers and carrying beans to the fermentation and drying areas.”

The process of replicating this initial success has started in both Ghana and Ivory Coast in the next three year. Ultimately, ICI aims to replicate this model with partners across the West African cocoa-growing region.