Remediation activities Addressing child labour requires a combination of individual, household and community solutions. For individual children, support is provided to get them back into school. Measures include securing birth certificates to enrol in school and providing school kits that contain notebooks, uniforms, footwear, math sets and bags, as well as bikes if they have to travel long distances to school. For older children, remediation involves placing them into vocational training programs. They can choose to pursue trade-based professions, like becoming mechanics, electricians, beauticians or seamstresses. They receive training, a stipend, equipment for their new trade and placement in
a
functional literacy & numeracy class.
At a household level, families are provided with wheelbarrows and pelle bongos, a safe tool used to open cocoa pods. These tools allow older children to support farming activities without lifting heavy loads or using sharp implements like machetes. Families with multiple children engaging in child labour can be provided with access to other income-generating activities. This involves providing start-up kits needed to engage in animal rearing, bread or soap making. Alternatively, these families receive tools, seeds and equipment to grow vegetables or fruits on their land. These new income streams allow them to pay for labour support on the cocoa farm instead of asking their children. At community level, infrastructure improvements ensure that children are growing up in an enabling environment: where there are schools they can attend, water is accessible (and does not require long walks that take them out of school), and healthcare is available. The construction of infrastructure is funded by the Chocolonely Foundation. We significantly accelerated child labour remediation in 21/22. Community facilitators from within each community have been assigned to work with farmers and their families. And we are seeing faster implementation at new partner cooperatives. We launched the CLMRS at two new cooperatives (ESCOPAG and Cayat), and they hit the ground running: they have already closed over 10% of the child labour cases they found, which is much faster than expected. 3/4 of the child labour cases detected at the long-term partner cooperatives on 1 October 2021 were closed by 30 September 2022. The remaining 25% of children have also already received remediation support. In total, 1,678 children received remediation support in 21/22, and these cases are therefore in the process of being fully remediated. This shows that the remediation process itself becomes more effective with continued implementation: it now takes around 9-12 months, compared to 24 months it took when we started with the CLMRS.
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Tony’s Open Chain impact report 2021/22
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