ICI launched a pilot project to build awareness of the issues around child and forced labour in 2004.  These pilot projects currently operate in Ghana and Ivory Coast and are led by the cocoa-growing communities themselves.  They are designed to provide a benchmark for measuring success and replicating practices which best support change -- driven from the community level.

The underlying causes of child labour are complex. Factors such as an ignorance of hazards, poor education provision, accepted social cultural norms, economic necessity and outright exploitation are all features. Reflecting this complex mix of causes ICI has adopted a comprehensive programme that:

• Works at the national level to ensure appropriate and effective policies are in place;
• Supports capacity building for local partners and institutions;
• Implements a community based programme to change practices;
• Supports social protection for victims of exploitation;
• Shares lessons learned for replication.
   

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.
   

In 2004, twenty four Ghanaian communities were targeted for initial Pilot Phase of the programme. The Pilot Phase was completed in early 2007. More IPs are being trained and ICI’s activities are now being scaled up. In 2007/2008, ICI works with 5 IPs in Ivory Coast (in 88 communities in 2007/2008) and 7 in Ghana (109 communities in 2007).