Evaluation Learnings Search

Learning Description

The self-assessment for the cocoa cooperatives, particularly the element that asks them to assess their strategy for inclusion, is a useful tool for cocoa cooperatives moving forward. In order to ensure its efficacy, the tool should be prescriptive and detailed when it comes to representation of women and other marginalized groups.

Learning Description

Awareness raising through training in local languages is a promising practice, particularly when conducted in local languages and pictorial instruction.

Learning Description

The project's cooperation with the Federation of Kenya Employers has provided initial training to employers who are committed to developing and formalizing grievance-handling procedures, which is likely to increase respect for workers’ rights by enforcing laws and ordinances, conducting inspections, and applying dispute resolution mechanisms. The Federation of Kenya Employers has trained personnel from 30 employers (seven apparel and 23 tea companies) on effective grievance-handling procedures in the workplace. The project's staff shared their plans to develop procedures and provide follow-up training for employers to effectively use tools to handle grievances. Such procedures should align with International Labor Organization grievance-handling principles, including the right to submit a grievance without suffering any prejudice and the right to an effective grievance examination procedure open to all workers. Such workplace procedures may offer an avenue to help workers ensure their rights are respected and help strengthen businesses by “constituting a safety valve which helps to prevent the outburst of serious disputes.” Such procedures could potentially provide a confidential system for airing complaints directly to the inspectorate. For example, the assessment proposed that workers who are victims of noncompliance be able to signal problems directly to the inspectorate via the electronic case management system and recommended that the project invest in real-time information and communications technology approaches such as telephone and SMS hotlines associated with the electronic case management system. The recent exposure of systematic abuse in the tea sector has made clear that workers’ grievances have neither been aired nor effectively managed. Such an “outburst” has occurred and highlights the urgency of this promising practice in the Kenyan context.

Learning Description

The project’s evolving youth engagement outreach builds awareness of child labor and rights that could potentially accelerate community demand for accountable government services to protect youth and other vulnerable populations. These activities hold promise for generating community demand for accountable government services that protect workers’ rights through laws and ordinances, inspection and enforcement processes, dispute resolution opportunities, and private sector goods from employers that respect workers’ dignity. By demonstrating compliance with acceptable conditions of work and good practices, including social dialogue and streamlined grievance-handling and mediation, communities and workers are more able to demand increased government services. su

Learning Description

Using the cocoa cooperative as an entry point presented both advantages and disadvantages. While it was largely seen as effective at strengthening the cooperatives and improving collaboration between actors, farmers felt that it excluded many of their neighbors and there was confusion around how the project would support vulnerable households if not through direct services.

Learning Description

Although the intent of the project was not to directly reduce child labor in the community, the project’s program’s theory of changes posited that these reductions would occur if cooperatives and law enforcement were strengthened in their capacity and accountability to monitor child labor, awareness was raised and vulnerable families were supported. Structural barriers such as the lack of schools and alternatives to labor for children, and the persistence of poverty put the theory of change to test and may signal the need for more comprehensive programming that will help address these systems-level challenges.

Learning Description

Multisectoral convening was found effective in validating assessments’ findings and guided the development of laws, policies, local ordinances, and key tools, such as the project's small and medium enterprise child labor toolkit. Stakeholders appreciated this approach and observed that it has contributed to strengthening links among the tripartite and participating service delivery nongovernmental organizations. Some stakeholders expressed that without these convenings, they would not have been aware of one another’s existence nor known how to work together and strengthen their ability to refer victims to appropriate service providers. While some stakeholders reported they have not been sufficiently engaged, the overall multisectoral or area-wide approach has been appreciated by most stakeholders.

Learning Description

The project trained workers through the Federation of Kenya Employers to increase awareness of workers’ rights. These activities hold promise for generating community demand for accountable government services that protect workers’ rights through laws and ordinances, inspection and enforcement processes, dispute resolution opportunities, and private sector goods from employers that respect workers’ dignity. By demonstrating compliance with acceptable conditions of work and good practices, including social dialogue and streamlined grievance-handling and mediation, communities and workers are more able to demand increased government services.

Learning Description

Increasing the number of people trained needs to be approached with assessment and compensatory measures to ensure that trainees are given the appropriate resources and adequate instruction to be able to retain and apply the information from sensitization trainings.

Learning Description

Forging new relationships with government representatives and assemblies, and cocoa cooperatives, and communicating the nuances of a capacity strengthening project (compared to a direct services project) is extremely challenging and ample time should be allocated to these efforts to ensure there is buy-in and understanding from affected communities.