Hiawu Besease Cooperative Cocoa Farmers and Marketing Society Limited in the Atwima Nwabiagya Municipality, have received items to aid the running of their office and farming activities under a project dubbed MATE MASIE. With Funding from the United States Department of Labour (USDOL), Winrock International, is implementing the Making Advances to Eliminate Child Labour in More Areas with Sustainable Integrated Efforts (MATE MASIE) project, to combat child labour in four districts. The project, which is being implemented in Atwima Nwabiagya, Atwima Mponua, Offinso, and Adansi South is strategically working through cocoa cooperatives in the four districts. The Hiawu Besease Cooperative Cocoa Farmers, which is one of the four cocoa cooperatives partnering Winrock International to implement the project, has an In-Kind Grant agreement with Winrock because it is a community-based cooperative whose capacity is being built. Under the agreement, the MATE MASIE project supports the cooperative to procure equipment and goods for office set-up and remediation support, to build their capacity and also strengthen their systems to combat child labour in their supply chain. It is against this background that some items have been procured and handed over to executives of the cooperative at a brief ceremony at Hiawu-Besease. They include office chairs, tables, ceiling and standing fans, computers, printer, file cabinet, refrigerator, saw pruners, cutlasses, motorized sprayers, knapsack sprayers, wellington boots, raincoats, nose masks, and goggles. Mr Fidelis Yapel, Project Director of MATE MASIE, said the project sought to strengthen the capacity of cocoa cooperatives to effectively monitor child labour in their operations to eliminate child labour in the cocoa supply chain. 'As part of the implementation of the project, Winrock identified poverty as one of the root causes of child labour. Cocoa farmers are unable to manage their farm practices due to poverty and unavailability of the requisite logistics to work,' he ind icated. He said Winrock as part of the project intervention implemented a child labour risk management tool which sought to identify vulnerable households and children who were at risk of getting into child labour to provide remediation support. 'That is why we are providing these logistics to support them in their farming activities to raise their income levels to reduce the vulnerability of their children to child labour,' he said. Mr Yapel disclosed that an interim evaluation showed that a lot had been achieved in terms of capacity strengthening, but much more needed to be done in the area of remediation to help vulnerable households to come out of poverty. Mr Isaac Amo Acheampong, an Assistant Director at the Municipal Assembly, applauded Winrock for their impactful interventions since the commencement of the project. He said the project was complementing government's initiatives targeting the elimination of child labour, adding that, the Assembly through its Child Protection Committee had been engag ing communities to raise awareness about the dangers associated with child labour. Mr Emmanuel Kwaku Asante, Secretary of Hiawu-Besease Cooperative Cocoa Farmers, said the MATE MASIE project had been a game changer which was significantly improving their farming activities. He said the project had also built their capacity in the fight against child labour, expressing their commitment to clamp down on the menace in the community. Source: Ghana News Agency