Combining
Sustainable Agricultural Development and Basic Education
to Combat Child Labor and Trafficking
Ghana
April 2002-present
 In
April 2002, the BEPS child labor team completed a planning
analysis that identified NGOs that could assist in designing
integrated child labor strategies to be funded by international
donors.
USAID Africa Bureau’s sustainable
agriculture section requested assistance in creating a
framework integrating
child labor into the Sustainable Tree Crops Program (STCP),
a USAID-funded public-private partnership that seeks to raise
the income and quality of life in cocoa-producing communities.
Child labor is a predominate challenge in cocoa and cashew
production in countries where STCP is active. The request
has led to collaboration in Ghana that brings together sustainable
agricultural development and basic education.
The BEPS team designed interventions addressing indentured
servitude and trafficking of children into cocoa production
and is working with CARE Ghana and Lintas, a local NGO that
does HIV/AIDS social marketing, to launch a radio social
marketing campaign in Ghana. The emphasis is on developing
functional literacy. A life skills/literacy curriculum will
be written in the context of agriculture, using audiotapes,
textbooks, and training tools. The team will focus on the
communication of social messages to raise awareness and on
providing a training of trainers program. The program aims
to teach best practices in management and identify problems.
Social messaging will focus on the difference between abusive
child labor and child work, and will educate children, their
families and the general public about the dangers of using
children to perform hazardous tasks, worker rights, occupational
safety and health, and HIV/AIDS.
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