Entry: Charlie Feezel, World Cocoa Foundation

Abigail Sarfowaa, 22, is the first member of her family to go to college. She is a second year student at Watico, the Sefwi-Wiawso Teacher Training College in Ghana's Western Region. Abigail, an Ashanti from the middle latitudes of Ghana, is focused on becoming a primary school teacher. When she graduates she will be assigned to a school where her students' learning environment will be improved because of the knowledge and skills she develops at Watico. The photo below shows Abigail making teaching and learning matierials to use as teaching aids. It's taken by Quinton Crawford, her teacher, who is a Teachers For Africa volunteer with the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH).

WCF and IFESH bring volunteers like Quinton to Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire through the WCF and USAID-supported ECHOES program to improve opportunities for youth and young adults in cocoa growing communities. Thanks to Abigail and Quinton for the fine work they are doing.

Entry: Bill Guyton and Tracey Duffey, World Cocoa Foundation

Today we were invited by the Embassy of Ghana in Washington, DC and the Let’s Go Africa Foundation to speak at an educational forum on Africa’s natural resources. Over 300 high school and middle school students participated from the Metropolitan Area of Washington, DC. Unfortunately, we had some technical challenges showing a video on cocoa farming. As a result, we spent most of our time answering questions about cocoa farming and marketing.

Some were surprised that the chocolate companies do not own farms, but rather that cocoa is primarily farmed by over two million independent family farms in West Africa. A representative from the Embassy of Ghana explained how the Ghana Cocoa Board has played a central role in supporting cocoa growing communities by financing community hospitals, scholarships, and technical training for farmers. The World Cocoa Foundation also plays a key role with African governments and local communities by funding “farmer field schools” that help to raise incomes and help grow the crop in a more socially responsible and environmentally sound manner.

Another student asked what policies can be put in place to make sure that natural resources extracted from Africa are more evenly and equitably distributed. We believe that there is a role of industries and governments to work in partnership to improve rural economies. There are models where this works successfully in cocoa and the other industries mentioned during the forum.

After the morning discussions, the students had a chance to talk individually with us on sustainable cocoa, and then were treated to a traditional African drumming and dance performance.

The closing ceremony included awards presented to the winners of a quiz on natural resources in Africa. We were proud to have three students tie for first place. Here is a photo of Kwasi Bosompem and his colleague Margaret Udahogora from the Let's Go Africa Foundation presenting a prize to one of the top-scoring students.

We commend the Embassy of Ghana and the Let’s Go Africa Foundation for inviting us to attend this forum. We hope it will become an annual event.

Entry: Mil Niepold, Senior Policy Advisor, Verité

The fall was a very fertile time for the launch of the verification phase of the cocoa certification effort, outlined originally in the Harkin - Engel Protocol. Since many people around the world are interested to know more about what has happened so far and what they can expect over the coming months, I thought I would provide a brief update.

Verité, a leading labor rights NGO, was hired by industry in June of 2007 to create a "road map" for the verification process. My core conviction all along has been that only a truly multi-stakeholder initiative would allow this effort to succeed. The complexity of the cocoa supply chain is such that it requires the commitment, dedication and experience of everyone working together - from the local NGO representative working on the Burkinabe border who spent three days just getting to our Boston meeting - to the governments of several nations - to find the best way forward.

While "engagement" can be quite a buzz word, the first NGO Consultative meeting in Boston (December, 2007) showed me the power of truly engaging the minds of many people around the central questions of how to make verification the best that it can be, and moreover, how to make sure that it helps strengthen remediation activities, thereby improving lives, in the years to come?

This meeting paved the way for the first major step in this process to unfold successfully - the creation of the 9 member multi-stakeholder International Cocoa Verification Board (ICVB). The details of who is on the Board, what role they play and how they will select verifiers will be up on the Verité website in the coming days (and the ICVB will have its own website soon, so check back often)! Simply put, the experts on the ICVB are tasked with selecting the most experienced and trustworthy verifiers to evaluate the accuracy of the National Surveys conducted by the Governments of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Rather than a dry scientific data-gathering exercise, this verification effort represents our first real opportunity to come together around information that we can all agree on and then roll up our sleeves and get to work on redesigning and eventually coordinating remediation efforts in ways that make the most strategic sense.