In 2018, ICI marked the third year of implementation of its 2015–2020 Strategy. It was also the last year of ICI’s child-centred community development “core programme” before transitioning to its revised Strategy 2019–2020. 

By end-2018, our direct action had benefited 287,762 children, and we are on course to realise our revised direct-action target of improving child protection for 375,000 children by 2020. Yet, with an estimated 2.1 million child labourers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, we will also focus specifically on the challenge of upscaling over the next two years. We will test and apply innovations and adaptations in selected communities and across our project work. 

Innovation projects in three core areas of ICI’s work will explore the feasibility, efficiency and sustainability of our current models. In order to support the required expansion of due diligence systems, we will test adaptations to Child Labour Monitoring & Remediation Systems (CLMRS) to make them more efficient and cost-effective and to embed them more easily in supply chains and communities. A second pilot on child rights will further explore the vital role that quality education – water and sanitation in schools, teacher training, innovative pedagogy, and more – plays in child-labour prevention. The third pilot, which examines ways to better identify and manage forced labour risks for both children and adults, will be tested in selected at-risk areas of the cocoa supply chain.