This week the Department of Labor’s Child Labor Cocoa Coordinating Group (CLCCG) reported out on programs aiming to reduce child labor in the cocoa sectors of Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana. While many companies have increased their commitments to reducing child labor in the communities they source from, others lag behind, notably Hershey and Barry Callebaut.
Hershey’s commitment of $600,000 was only 17 percent of Mars’ (its largest competitor in the US). Hershey’s only initiative to fall under the CLCCG program requirements is the CocoaLink, program, which sends text and voice messages to farmers to discourage the use of child labor and encourage more efficient farming techniques. This program was launched in March of 2011 and to date has 3,720 subscribers registered in Ghana, where there are an estimated 700,000+ cocoa farmers. CocoaLink has reached less than 1% of cocoa farmers in Ghana, and no farmers in Cote D’Ivoire.
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