Solidaridad, in collaboration with Vitara, has established Child Protection Committees in communities in Ghana’s Northern and Upper West regions in response to the frequent use of children for labour in shea collection and processing.
The four committees, made up of local leaders, women’s groups and community members, will work with traditional authorities and the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development to identify cases of child labour and other protection concerns, report them and connect affected children and families to appropriate services.
The committees were set up under the Female Aggregating Association initiative, an 18-month project funded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency designed to create income and business opportunities for women while improving access to finance and reducing the use of children in shea collection.
Child protection concerns can remain invisible or unresolved when communities lack clear mechanisms for identification, reporting and referral. The committees are therefore to provide a first-line response while connecting communities to the government structures mandated to handle cases.
“Child protection cannot be left to the Social Welfare Department alone. When communities are organised and trained to identify risks early and work with us, we are better able to respond quickly, connect vulnerable children and families to the right support, and ensure that children are protected”
Antoinette Akua Baffowaa, Social Welfare Officer for the Yendi Municipal in the Northern Region
She shared how sustained intervention helped a child return to school, complete the Basic Education Certificate Examination and qualify for senior high school, an outcome she credits to early identification, trusted community reporting and sustained collaboration between communities and formal social welfare services, the same combination the committees are now designed to formalise at scale.
According to the Social Welfare Department, in most shea-growing communities, poverty, social norms and limited awareness of children’s rights can influence decisions about children’s involvement in household and farm work. For example, parents who cannot adequately provide for their children sometimes send them to live with another family on the understanding that they will be cared for and enrolled in school; in some cases, the children are instead made to take on excessive work, denied adequate care or kept out of school.
For some women, their membership in the committees and the training received thus far from Solidaridad has already prompted a reassessment of long-held beliefs and attitudes.
In Dormawa, a community in the Upper West Region, Hawa Alhassan, a mother of nine and shea collector, says the training changed how she views education and children’s participation in farm work.
“I did not go to school and did not see the need for school. I thought every child’s role, no matter their age, was to help their parents work and earn money,” she says. “But now I see that if I had gone to school, life would have been better. I will do everything possible to get my children to go to school. I will also talk to other parents about the importance of sending their children to school, instead of just using them on the farm.”
In Nator Duorir, another community in the region, a mother of four who farms and processes shea butter describes a similar change.
“I knew it was not good to involve children in work, but some of us still did it. Through this training, I became more aware,” she says. Esther mentions poverty as a major pressure on families and believes stronger community by-laws could reinforce efforts to prevent child labour.
These shifts in awareness are feeding into stronger, more sustained community action. Solidaridad is supporting the committees with training, tools and ongoing coaching, while their engagement with Social Welfare and traditional authorities is strengthening referral pathways and local capacity to respond to cases.
Solidaridad and Vitara will continue to provide technical support to the Child Protection Committees during the project period while monitoring case referrals, response times, and families’ access to services, to evaluate the model’s contribution to strengthening community-level child protection systems. The intended sustainability mechanism is community ownership of the committees, with ongoing support from district Social Welfare offices and integration into local governance structures.