Africa - ECHOES Alliance
The Issue:
Access to quality and relevant basic education is a major challenge that rural communities in Côte d’Ivoire Ghana confront daily.
- Youth are migrating to urban areas in search of educational and employment opportunities.
- For the young people who remain in rural areas, access to quality education is difficult.
- Because of the quality of education in farming areas, many farmers do not see a benefit in sending their children to school and prefer that they help out on the farm.
- If youth in these rural cocoa farming communities are not able to find tangible benefits in staying in their communities, the combination of aging farmers and urban emigration will precipitate a social and economic crisis.
These circumstances threaten the future of the rural economy, which is the current source of livelihood for over 60% of the population of cocoa farming communities.
Partners:
- Cloetta Fazer
- ED&F Man Cocoa
- The Hershey Company
- Kraft Foods
- Mars Inc.
- Norwegian Association of Chocolate Manufacturers
- Olam International Ltd.
- Starbucks Coffee Company
- USAID Africa Bureau Education Division
- International Foundation for Education and Self-Help
- Making Cents International
- Winrock International
How the World Cocoa Foundation Helps:
In partnership with the United States agency for International Development’s Africa Education Initiative and its members WCF has launched the Empowering Cocoa Households with Opportunities and Education Solutions (ECHOES) program.
ECHOES joins the successes of two previous WCF programs, IFESH Teacher Training and Winrock CLASSE to form a relevant, integrated education program. Activities include:
- Teacher training to help teacher make learning more engaging and interactive.
- Resource centers for teachers to make visual aids, games, and worksheets for their classrooms
- Classes to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to youth and young adults
- Family support scholarships to help parents’ fund their children’s education by developing small businesses.
- Agriculture classes in primary and secondary schools to provide future famers with the skills they need to succeed
- Training for out-of-school youth to provide the skills they need to start their own cocoa farms