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"Cocoa Life’s integrated approach is designed to promote the human rights of smallholder

famers, as well as the social and economic resilience of cocoa farming communities. When

a new community joins the program, our NGO partners conduct a thorough participatory needs

assessment on focus areas including labor risks such as forced and child labor. Based on this

assessment and with support from our partners, community members develop a Community

Action Plan, which provides a detailed roadmap for community activation. Based on this plan, and as part of the program’s holistic approach, our partners then implement a range of activities that address the issues identified." p. 14

 

"Drawing on nearly ten years of experience working with farmers to help improve their net

income, in November 2021, in partnership with Wageningen University & Research (WUR) we

published a new paper, Balancing the Living Income Challenge, outlining the need for the

cocoa sector to take a multi-actor approach for more farmers to achieve a living income. This

follows the executive summary paper, No Silver Bullets, which we co-published with WUR

in 2020.

We are calling for greater collaboration across the sector to approach the income challenges

facing cocoa farmers. Mondelēz International drives positive, measurable change on the ground

through Cocoa Life, yet we know that more action is needed as a sector. We need all stakeholders from the cocoa sector – governments, producers, suppliers, investors, farmers and more – to come together to build a shared understanding of the living income challenge, so that every actor can determine where they can have the most impact and develop coordinated strategies to do so." p. 15

 

"Ending child labor across the West African cocoa

sector is more than Mondelēz International can

do alone, so we collaborate with a number of

stakeholders across the cocoa supply chain.

Through our involvement with the World Cocoa

Foundation (WCF) and the International Cocoa

Initiative (ICI), we support a systemic approach

to address the root causes of child labor and

call for strong public private partnerships with

governments, development partners and civil

society organizations." p. 16

 

"We join forces with partners in a range of initiatives

to support sustainable cocoa production including

the World Cocoa Foundation where we serve on the

Board of Directors. We also serve on the Board of

Directors of the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a multi-stakeholder platform, whose mission is to help eliminate child labor and forced labor in the

cocoa sector. Through these platforms, we also call

for industry and governments to join forces to create

comprehensive, systemic solutions that address the

root causes of child and forced labor." p. 24