Resources

This report presents research commissioned by the World Cocoa Foundation that explores the financial and business case for supporting Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs), a key part of cocoa sustainability strategies.

Cash transfers are increasingly used as a way of addressing poverty across the world. Evidence shows that they can have a positive impact on children’s welfare, improving access to education, nutrition, health and material wellbeing. However, much less is known about their impact on child labour. To fill this evidence gap, the International Cocoa Initiative conducted a review of evidence on how cash transfers affect child labour. The study is part of an ongoing project with Nestlé and ECOM, supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

This brief review by ICI looks at evidence from past pandemics to understand the risks for children and identify what can be done to address them. It draws on evidence from other pandemics, notably Ebola, to understand how children were affected, exploring how applicable these findings might be to cocoa-growing communities.

The VOICE Network presents a consultation paper for the 2020 Cocoa Barometer. The paper suggests current living income reference prices are too low and lays out the Network’s recommendations to the cocoa industry regarding the setting of such price limits, among others.

ICI’s Understanding Child Labour Risk study identified a limited set of community characteristics, which can be collected easily and at low cost, that can be used to predict a community’s child labour risk. The research team produced two, country-specific models – one for Côte d’Ivoire and one for Ghana – which can be used to identify and target the most vulnerable communities for support. By answering a few simple questions, a community can be classified in one of three categories: lower, medium or higher risk of child labour. Data collection tools were developed using KoBo Toolbox and are