Beyond Chocolate Anniversary Meeting 1 year on and going strong!
On the 5th of December 2019, members of the Beyond Chocolate partnership came together for the 1st year anniversary meeting to reflect on progress made and discuss next phase of project advancement. With Beyond Chocolate, all signatories commit themselves to working together on a whole range of challenges in the field of sustainable chocolate, such as tackling deforestation, child labour and living income for local cocoa products.
Patrick Hautphenne, steering committee chair for the Beyond Chocolate partnership opened the event by stating the partnership is dedicated and committed to making the cocoa industry fully sustainable. He also called out to every stakeholder and governments to participate. Thereafter the 3 working groups then presented the key outcomes of their respective working group discussions which included a detailed discussion around intermediary targets and basic indicators. All 3 groups stressed the importance of ensuring linkages and alignment between them. Living income has to be addressed together with deforestation and child labour matters and in doing this, it is important to identify the different roles and responsibilities of each actor. The design of the Accountability and M&E Framework was later presented highlighting the key indicators to track the implementation of Beyond Chocolate commitments. There was also a call to ensure clear alignment alongside the German, Swiss and Dutch initiatives.
The highlight of the event was the keynote speech from Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Development Cooperation, Alexander de Croo who emphasised that sustainability was the right course from a human and economic perspective.
IDH then launched the first call for proposals for the co-funding of ambitious projects. Project proposals should improve, innovate, scale or accelerate the effectiveness and efficiency of sustainability initiatives in the Belgian chocolate sector. Project proposals should contribute to the achievement of both the general and respective individual ambitions in the Beyond Chocolate partnership. To read and obtain more information on the full prospectus and concept template, refer
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