Gender

It is shortly after 9 am in Koffiyaokro, a community located 30 km from Soubré in the Nawa region of Côte d’Ivoire. Mrs. Kouamé N’Guessan Félicité, President of the Women’s Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA), is busy going back and forth between her house and the village square.

At the International Cocoa Initiative, we support our partners to empower women in cocoa communities. That’s because women have a crucial role to play in the fight against child labour. In this article we explore some of the ways that supporting women in cocoa-growing communities can be beneficial to child protection.

Agnes Dede lives in Abease, a cocoa-growing community in Ghana. As a facilitator for literacy and numeracy classes in her community, she has graduated 12 adult learners from her course. Many of her students have never been to school or have limited education.

Empowering members of cocoa-growing communities can play an important role in tackling child labour. When farmers, particularly women, have the power to make decisions and sustain their households

In 2017, a group of women from Pakyi, a cocoa-growing community in Ghana, were supported by the International Cocoa Initiative’s Community Development Programme to start pepper farms to raise additional income and support the protection of their children.

The International Cocoa Initiative set up literacy and numeracy classes in Ghana with the support of the Non-Formal Education Secretariat as part of the Community Development Programme in 2016. It