The Nyonkopa Child Labor Remediation Project is a 2-year contractual engagement between Barry-Callebaut (Parent Company of Nyonkopa Cocoa) and Participatory Development Associates as the service provider.
The entire remediation intervention was built on PDA’s participatory Child Labor Remediation Module developed through years of implementing child labor remediation in the cocoa sector in multiple countries including Ghana and Ivory Coast.
The objective of this intervention is to oversee the remediation process and provide remediation activities for six thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight (6,678) children engaged in child labor, and their families and communities in over 277 communities across 28 local government administrative Metropolitan/Municipal/District Assemblies.
As part of the implementation of this project, 20 VSLA groups have been formed in some selected child labour-endemic communities as an economic empowerment tool to improve financial security of the farmers and their households. Among other benefits, the VSLA concept is known to have provided members (cocoa farmers) with a reliable alternative source of income to address household labor deficiency challenges as one of the root causes of child labour. This project is participatory, and has included community entry into several cocoa growing communities, sensitisation about group formation, establishment of VSLA groups, co-development of group governance structure, among others. The over 200 beneficiary communities are spread across 6 Nyonkopa administrative sectors namely Akim Oda, Assin Fosu, Asante Bekwai, Kasapin, Goaso and Juaboso.