Adwuma Pa

Results

Adwuma Pa Project Result Highlights
(Oct 2021 – July 2023)

• The project created a common electronic platform to improve coordination and collaboration between the District Gender and Child Protection Committees in several districts. This has increased a number of  committees' ability to detect and prevent labor violations and better address the needs of child labor and forced labor survivors. In addition, gender-related abuses were reduced, and access to social protection services increased.
• The project has provided over 2,000 women in cocoa-growing communities with micro-enterprise training and access to business financial services, including starting or joining a Village Savings and Loan (VSLA). These women can now generate and diversify their income, raising their family's living standard, often out of extreme poverty, and reducing their dependency on subsistence farming. This lessens their reliance on child labor for needed income and allows children to return to school.
• To ensure greater economic success, many of the women who received micro-enterprise training through the project started micro-enterprise businesses as a group venture. This approach allowed women to pool resources, streamline efforts, and reduce economic risk. In some cases, women obtained community support for structures to house tools, create maker spaces, or establish a place to conduct all business operations.
• To improve the economic participation of women and girls vulnerable to child labor, forced labor, and other labor rights violations in Ghana’s cocoa supply chain, the project helped form 12 women-led cocoa cooperatives. As women take on leadership roles in these cooperatives, they build their agency, increase their bargaining power, bolster their ability to advocate for issues affecting women in the group, and even inspire women in their communities. These cooperatives also improve members’ access to the social capital they need to sustain cocoa farms. 
• The project helped establish partnerships between women-led cocoa cooperative and the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations, the Department of Cooperatives, and the sustainability unit of the Olam Ghana Agri-company. Through these connections, cooperative members now have access to other services and business supports to help get their beans (and other commodities) ready for market. The project also linked eight cooperatives with rural banks to increase members’ access to credit, which in turn helps them sustain and grow their businesses and reduce risk during volatile seasons and markets. 
• To improve the economic participation of adolescent girls and equip them with critical skills to reduce their susceptibility to labor exploitation, the project provided life skills training to more than 1,240 girls and placed 382 girls with Master Crafts Persons to learn new trades. Many of these girls will move on to start their own businesses and become leaders in their communities. Some will even return to formal schooling.
• As a result of project engagement with associations of Master Crafts Persons and Community Development Committees, Adwuma Pa was able to reduce tuition costs for adolescent girls seeking vocational training. The project is also working with the Community Development Committees to negotiate with the Association of Master Crafts Persons to enroll other vulnerable girls at reduced fees beyond the project lifetime. This partnership demonstrates how stakeholders are willing to support project goals to improve economic outcomes for adolescent girls living in cocoa-growing communities. 
• The Adwuma Pa project assisted Olam Ghana, the fifth largest company in Ghana, in reviewing key policy documents to identify gaps to address and promote good labor practices in its cocoa supply chain. As a result, Olam developed a gender policy that better protects female employees and women-led cocoa cooperatives. The company has also implemented a paternity leave system and increased the number of months for maternity leave from three to four months for direct company employees. Providing these protections for women will result in thousands of families reducing economic risk during volatile times.
• This project also trained over 140 Olam staff and contractors on ways to identify, track, assess, and protect against child labor and labor rights violations. This resulted in Olam reconstituting Child Protection Committees within farmer communities to include grievance and gender focal persons to receive and report on rights violations at the community level.