“…working on the cocoa block has made me feel good…I’m a changed man. I save, I budget, I don’t fight with my wife. I made a ‘penny box’ and after putting in 5-20 Kina [1.5-6 USD] after each sale, at the end of the year we bought a semi-permanent house.” This young farmer is not alone. 94% of farmers in the BECOMES project report social improvements in their lives.
BECOMES—the Bougainville Cocoa Farming Families Support Project—has been operating in Papua New Guinea since 2016, and will run until 2020. It Reaches 3,000 people with $2.7 million in support from the governments of Australia and New Zealand.
What have we accomplished?
- Families have graduated out of poverty: Average annual income has doubled—up to $1,063. That means families have gone from below the poverty line to an average income of $2.91 a day. 99% of people are reporting increases in income.
- Couples are working together: More than 60% of families say that one of the biggest impacts is working together to achieve the family vision. There’s been an increase in shared decision making.
- Communities are more peaceful: The biggest impact communities report is an improvement in conflict-resolution skills. Community groups report being more functional, and they are more likely to include women and youth.
- Cocoa production is going up: There’s been a 38% increase in cocoa production, and an 11.5% increase in production efficiency.
- Families can build a safety net: 72% of families report being able to save and plan for the future. Better managing their money is one of the changes families value the most.
How did we get there?
- Help farmers build skills: The Family Business Management Training helped 53% of farmers adopt new agriculture practices, and a 23% increase in post-harvest processing techniques. The communities, government, and private companies have been impressed with the high quality of the tool.
- Focus on gender: The project built from a gender labor analysis to make the case for supporting women in the cocoa farming training. BECOMES also hosts couples dialogues and a shared visioning exercise for families to plan their future more equally and give themselves something to work towards.
- Serve partners: The project partners rate CARE as having high quality expertise and are actively seeking more engagement with CARE.
- Use your data: One of the areas where partners rate CARE highly is data transparency. “CARE shares more data than other NGOs” according to one partner. CARE focused on using data from out monitoring systems for prompting conversations with others and improving the project.
Want to learn more?
Check out the midterm evaluation and the Family Business Management Training toolkit.