PROGRESS BLOG
WHEN WOMEN RISE, COCOA THRIVES
Cocoa Life is celebrating 10 years of lifting up cocoa communities and shaping the landscapes where cocoa grows. 10 years of working on-the-ground with partners, and the women & men who grow cocoa to help everyone benefit from the bean that becomes the chocolate we love. 10 years of innovating and taking what works to scale so we can move cocoa forward together.
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10 Years of Cocoa Life
In 2022, to celebrate ten years of helping lift the people and protect the landscapes where cocoa grows, the Cocoa Life team launched the ‘10 Stories For 10 Years’ campaign. We spoke to key partners from across the program – from farmers to community members, local co-operative leads to global NGOs, our suppliers to our advisors – to tell 10 stories from the past decade. These stories highlight how Cocoa Life is helping make cocoa sourcing more sustainable in key cocoa-producing countries, and demonstrate how through smart innovation and collaboration, we are helping to make cocoa right.
Women are change-makers – encouraging children to stay in school, creating new sources of income for their families, and encouraging environmentally friendly practices. Since 2012, Cocoa Life has been providing women with training, access to farm inputs and finance to improve their livelihoods and help their communities as a whole. To learn more about how we have been moving cocoa forward together over the past ten years, you can find the full series here.
"We have succeeded in creating a mass of women who understand cocoa production, who participate in cocoa production and who are able to make decisions on how they interface with cocoa. Cocoa Life has really amplified the women’s voices in terms of decision making, in terms of participation in the farmer unions, and in terms of the incomes that they earn."
Dr. Rose Mensah-Kutin, Director, West Africa Regional Office, ABANTU for Development