The end goal is to empower cocoa farmer communities to take the fight against child labor into their own hands. To this purpose, Barry Callebaut and Hershey are providing training and resources to build the capacity of community child protection committees which will focus on child protection, education and women’s empowerment. Children and families will be provided with assistance in the form of school kits, birth certificates, alternative groups to provide work, educational activities, vocational training for family members, and women’s income generation for mothers.

The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a multi-stakeholder platform of industry and NGOs, will take a leading role in the delivery of training programs on child labor monitoring and data analysis, and will drive remediation activities.

Katchilè, a geotraceability App developed by Barry Callebaut, allows us to better assess our farmers’ needs and track our impact related to sustainability activities. Katchilè, which will be one of the tools used to capture data, identifies households at risk as well as the presence of children working in the cocoa communities we source from.

“We are committed to a sustainable cocoa sector - which cannot exist if child labor persists,” stated Nicko Debenham, Head of Sustainability and MD Biolands and Chairman of Cocoa Horizons “While we may not have all of the answers today, we are engaging with experts and governments to ensure we find the solutions and implement the activities to make them a reality.”