Sandra Groth, where do you see Save the Children Switzerland's most significant potential to contribute to the SWISSCO Roadmap goals of improving sustainability in the cocoa value chain?
Save the Children works in more than 120 countries, therefrom many regions that are relevant to the SWISSCO’s work – such as West Africa, Asia and Latin America. We have a strong track record of working across different stakeholders to protect children’s rights and extensive expertise in the field of child protection, livelihoods, and education.
Drawing on more than 100 years of experience we are committed to supporting the efforts of the cocoa sector in fighting child labour and improving perspectives of the youth.
Child welfare and empowerment are central to Save the Children Switzerland's work. How do you envision your role within SWISSCO?
We hope that we can share some learnings on what leads to real impact for children and their rights, and how we can ensure to include their perspective into other focus areas of the SWISSCO Roadmap 2030 as well.
At the same time, we anticipate new ideas and perspectives from the existing SWISSCO members that will help us align and improve our joint work of strengthening child protection systems, enhancing the resilience of families, and ensuring good quality education for children.
Our members are committed to tackling child labour and improving the perspectives of youth. What advice do you have for other SWISSCO members when it comes to empowering youth in the cocoa sector?
Ensuring that adolescents and youth can acquire skills that lead to decent income is a key workstream for Save the Children. When working in the field of youth empowerment, we recommend ensuring that your efforts are contextualised, which means fit to meet additional challenges you might come across in the context, such as climate change. For example: how can job creation and youth entrepreneurship support a green transition and lead to the generation of green jobs?
To further cater to challenges on the ground as well as ensure sustainability over time, we consider the active participation of youth in the definition of project aims and targets as crucial.
Collaboration among diverse stakeholders is crucial for driving positive change in the cocoa sector. How does Save the Children Switzerland plan to leverage its expertise to foster partnerships within the platform?
Save the Children works to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world cares for children. We strongly believe in creating a meaningful impact by partnering with different stakeholders, on the global and local levels. Collaborating with diverse actors, our engagements span from big multinationals to local farming communities, and from global multi-stakeholder platforms to national authorities.
As such, we view SWISSCO as an excellent platform through which we can collectively work towards achieving this goal alongside other SWISSCO members. While doing so, it is crucial to ensure clarity about the roles and responsibilities of each actor. We are committed to bringing in and offering our global expertise within the SWISSCO platform as well as other multi-stakeholder initiatives.
Child labour is still a major problem in the cocoa sector, although the stakeholders involved are making great efforts to tackle it. Save the Children Switzerland has gained experience in other (agricultural) commodity sectors. How can these be transferred to the cocoa sector?
Across different agricultural commodities, Save the Children has gathered a lot of experience in strengthening national (Child Protection) systems as well as addressing root causes of child labour. We are already working in West Africa to promote this in our work with both the cocoa sector and the Ivorian government. We hope that through platforms like SWISSCO, and the EU-wide ISCO collaboration, we can share some learnings and improve alignment across all actors, including the cocoa sector itself.