The communities located in eight selected districts in the Ashanti, Eastern, Western and Central Regions have benefitted from various interventions that sought to reduce child labour while improving the lives of children in cocoa growing areas.

These included awareness raising and training on child labour issues, renovation and construction of school buildings, support for alternative income activities and provision of farm inputs to farmers.

The organization in partnership with other key stakeholders as part of efforts to improve child protection formed, trained and equipped 261 Community Child Protection Committees (CCPC) in all the 29 communities.

Over 50,000 community members were sensitized on child labour, child rights and responsibilities, child abuse, importance of education by the CCPC through household visits and public events.

The CCPC succeeded in identifying a number of children who were either at risk of child labour, engaged in child labour or found in hazardous activities after which an assessment was done on each child to determine the driving force of their situations.

A total of 307, children who were identified benefitted from ICI’s educational remediation programmes as they received education materials such as school bags, uniforms, footwears and books.

Forty-four others who were above school age were also supported to learn various vocations including masonry, carpentry, auto mechanic, hairdressing and dressmaking.     

Having identified high cost of labour as one of the main factors contributing to child labour, ICI with technical support from the Department of Agriculture in the eight districts mobilized interested community members and formed Community Service Groups (CSG).

The CSGs, formed in 25 communities are to provide labour such as spraying cocoa farms, pruning and weeding at cheaper rate to farmers.

Other achievements of ICI during the three-year period was the formation of Child Protection Clubs in 37 schools, training of members of School Management Committees (SMCs), construction of classroom blocks for nine primary schools, construction of one teachers’ bungalow and the provision of 500 dual desks to 12 schools.

Also at various stages of construction are three-unit classroom blocks for four primary schools and two kindergarten (KG) buildings. At a symbolic handing over of graduation packages to beneficiary communities at Bonkro in the Ahafo-Ano South West District, ICI handed over a three-unit classroom block, gari processing plant and 40 dual desks to the community.

Mr. Mike Arthur, the Country Director of ICI, said the exercise held at Bonkro marked the end of the interventions in all the 29 beneficiary communities. He said ICI would continue to monitor the progress of the communities despite the completion of the programme, adding that the organization would continue to work with the communities but in a different way.

He applauded the communities for their cooperation and accepting to work with ICI and urged them to build on the gains as ICI exited their communities. Nana Kwaku Anane, the Chief of Bonkro, praised ICI for the support they had given the community for the past three years, which had tremendously improved the lives of the people.

He said their presence had made them more conscious about child labour issues, adding that even children in the community were able to determine what constituted child labour and hazardous work.

 International Cocoa Initiative (ICI)