Private Sector

Senderos is a project in Mexico that involves multiple stakeholders in government, the private sector, and civil society working together to improve adherence to international standards on child labor, forced labor, occupational safety and health (OSH), and other acceptable conditions of work in the sugarcane and tobacco sectors in Jalisco and Nayarit.

This project works to improve the implementation of social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and the prevention and reduction of child and forced labor in palm oil supply chains in Colombia and Ecuador. It will also disseminate best practices in social compliance systems in these and other palm oil producing countries, particularly Brazil and Peru.

This project will help businesses establish systems to prevent, detect and eliminate child labor and other forms of labor exploitation from their supply chains, and will assemble a powerful coalition of coffee buyers to collectively incentivize compliance among suppliers. In doing so, the project will help promote supply chains free of exploitative labor and a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

The United States is the leading importer of coffee, accounting for over 18% of total coffee imports in the world, with Brazil and Colombia as the top suppliers. But before that coffee reaches our cups, tens of millions of workers globally select, pick and process the beans. Many workers are children – toiling in the fields rather than learning in school.

Project Objectives: To improve educational outcomes for child and adolescents involved in child labor; and improve family income so that households do not need to rely on the work of children for survival.