Entry: Charlie Feezel, World Cocoa Foundation

I am happy to introduce the newest member of the World Cocoa Foundation ECHOES team, Margaret Odotei. Margaret is the WCF Education Program Technical Coordinator for Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and is based in Accra. Her presence will allow the WCF ECHOES Alliance to increase local partner communication and enhance program implementation, while growing WCF's relationships with host governments, implementing partners and WCF member companies.

Pictured (Left to right): Margaret Odotei, (WCF Education Program Technical Coordinator for Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire), Minister Enoch Teye Mensah (Minister of Employment and Social Welfare of Ghana), and Mbalo Ndiaye (WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program Director).

Margaret brings with her a strong background in West African development, including work as a program officer for ANCEFA (Africa Network Campaign on Education for All), during which she oversaw the implementation of the Civil Society Education Fund in Burkina Faso, Liberia, Nigeria, and Ghana. Margaret holds a Masters Degree in International Relations and a Bachelors degree in French and Psychology. We welcome Margaret and look forward to her strong role in enabling broader program coordination.

Entry: Bill Guyton, World Cocoa Foundation

At the World Cocoa Foundation, partnerships are a key component of our work. We rely on our partners in industry, the public sector, academia, research institutes, and other organizations to carry out our programs. As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I am especially excited about a new partnership with the Peace Corps, officially announced by Director Aaron Williams during our Partnership Meeting in Washington, DC. The partnership encourages collaboration and joint activities in countries where we both currently operate, including Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Many of our members, staff, and other partners also are former Peace Corps volunteers, so there is a natural connection with WCF. It is another example of the kind of initiative that will bring enhanced success to our efforts in support of cocoa farmers, their families, and their communities.

Director of Peace Corps, Aaron Williams (7th from right), is joined by World Cocoa Foundation members, staff and partners who are former Peace Corps volunteers to celebrate the new partnership.

Bill Guyton, WCF President, Anne Alonzo, Vice President, Global Public Policy, Kraft Foods and Chair, WCF Board of Directors, and Aaron Williams, Director, Peace Corps.

Entry: Catherine Alston, World Cocoa Foundation

This fall, I had an opportunity to travel to Liberia to meet with the technical partners of the WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program (WCF CLP) and visit the cocoa-growing areas in Bong County. During this trip, I spoke with many cocoa farmers and discussed the key challenges they face. Every independent cocoa farmer I met told me that the cocoa trees on their farm are very old and not producing the yields needed for farmers to improve their household income. To meet this challenge, the farmers informed me that they need improved cocoa seedlings to regenerate their aged farms.

That is why I am so pleased to see the progress of the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI) of Liberia. Through the coordination of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture/Sustainable Tree Crops Program (IITA/STCP) and the Liberian government, CARI is developing hybrid material of improved cocoa seedlings from Ghana with Liberian stock that has learned how to thrive in the local environment.

Through grafting (pictured below) and hand pollination, the staff of CARI are growing the improved planting material that Liberian cocoa farmers so desperately need.

However, this process takes time and it will be another few years before CARI has seedlings that can be distributed to cocoa farmers throughout the country. Because of this, one of the primary goals of the WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program in Liberia is to provide the much needed cocoa seedlings and work with the cocoa farmers in Bong, Lofa and Nimba counties.

WCF CLP will focus the farmer production training on practices that will help farmers rejuvenate their old cocoa farms. It is expected that by the end of the program (2013) 7,800 farmers will have planted over 1,700 hectares of improved cocoa seedlings distributed through the WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program; effectively increasing the cocoa yield and incomes of the independent farmers I met.