MATE MASIE – Making Advances to Eliminate Child Labor in More Areas with Sustainable Integrated Efforts
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The MATE MASIE project seeks to strengthen capacity, connections, and accountability across child labor enforcement and monitoring within cocoa cooperatives. It is working to build the capacity of cocoa cooperatives to support vulnerable member households directly and by linking their members with other service providers.
The Problem
Ghana is a major producer of cocoa, with approximately 800,000 families relying on cocoa for their livelihoods. Cocoa production is labor intensive, and working on cocoa farms can be hazardous, particularly for children whose physical, mental, and psychological capacities are still developing. The informal nature of cocoa production represents one of the challenges to effective monitoring and prevention of child labor.
Efforts are needed to improve the capacity of cocoa cooperatives to monitor for child labor, build linkages and cooperation with enforcement authorities, and enhance the provision of social services to households with children at risk of child labor. There is also a need to empower civil society and communities to play an active role in efforts to reduce the prevalence of child labor in cocoa production.
Our Strategy
The MATE MASIE project aims to increase the number of cocoa cooperatives demonstrating a reduction of child labor in the cocoa supply chain by implementing activities to:
- Improve accountability of cocoa cooperatives to monitor child labor in the cocoa supply chain and facilitate government enforcement of child labor laws; and
- Strengthen partnerships to increase support to vulnerable households within cocoa cooperatives and provide access to child labor remediation programs.
MATE MASIE is collaborating with cocoa cooperatives and other stakeholders to support a locally developed farm-to-cooperative traceability system for child labor. MATE MASIE’s work is supporting a replicable pathway for child labor monitoring and service provision by cooperatives to pave the way for broader adoption of best practices on monitoring and enforcement. This work involves building capacity among government enforcement authorities at district and community levels, strengthening monitoring systems of cocoa cooperatives with significant and diverse farmer reach, and improving coordination and referral structures among service providers so that their interconnected roles mutually reinforce one another to become more effective in eliminating child labor in the cocoa sector.
Results
- MATIE MASIE’s partner cooperatives reached 5,410 people in 20 project target communities, raising awareness on child labor, positive parenting, and childcare. These activities have led to an increase in understanding on child rights and responsibilities amongst community members and in schools, and helps community members better recognize, report, and resolve cases of child labor.
- As of March 2024, the project’s partner cooperatives completed their first round of data collection using the MATE MASIE child labor risk management tool and Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS)/traceability system tools, identifying children at risk and engaged in child labor and vulnerable households. Once identified, children and their households are provided with appropriate remediation services. The project facilitated partnerships and signing of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) between partner cooperatives and service providers to provide social protection and child labor remediation services to vulnerable member households. The project also worked with cooperatives to improve the CLMRS tool to improve the process for the second round of data collecting, and continues to support providing training to strengthen and institutionalize this tool.
- To date, the project has provided social protection and child labor remediation services to coop community members such as: providing financial services and economic strengthening activities to 412 adults from 324 households; providing school kits and supplies to 90 children; registering 277 children and 118 other household members for health insurance; registering 69 children for birth certificates; providing protective items to 145 household members; and providing agricultural inputs to 60 household members.
- Grantee:
- Winrock International
- Contact Information:
- globalkids@ilab.dol.gov / Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT)
- Tags:
- Child Labor
- Agriculture
- Capacity Building
- Co-op
- Cocoa
- Cooperative
- FY20 Projects
- Ghana
- Supply Chains
- Traceability
