With more than 170 years of experience, ECOM Trading is a world leader in sustainable cocoa, coffee, and cotton chains. It is also one of the top five global suppliers of cocoa beans.
According to ECOM Trading, 90% of the cocoa beans come from small family farms. With the increasing challenges to continuing to work on the farms, such as adapting to changing technologies, financial security, access to business management education, or gender disparities in access to support for their business, ECOM understood that its business cannot be sustainable if its workers are not supported and empowered to address them.
ECOM Trading developed the Smarter Cocoa Charter, an actionable plan that, with the collaboration of different NGOs and institutions, including the Social Progress Imperative, identified the most pressing social and environmental issues in their industry and communities of its supply chain and created a strategy to address them throughout their supply chain, which includes farms, communities, factories, and the marketplace.
In this plan, ECOM shows how they are working to improve farmer and worker livelihoods, protect and regenerate nature, and manage change through transparency and traceability of ethically sourced cocoa beans. In 2020, using the Social Progress Index, ECOM committed to establishing a living income baseline that allows their communities to have a decent and thriving quality of life. ECOM used the Social Progress Index results for Ecuador and Peru as a key guideline to measure the wellbeing of their farming communities and they also used the Index as a human rights impact assessment tool.
“We can’t say we are successful if we open the windows of our office and see that there is no shared value with what surrounds us. Part of the success of an organization is social progress. The Social Progress Index is a tool that helps you identify relevant issues and themes in terms of your communities’ necessities. We should be committed leaders that generate impact and build progress.” - María José Canales, Human Capital Manager, ECOM Trading.
ECOM is expanding its work by creating new partnerships in Ecuador and Peru to keep addressing the worst-performing social indicators identified in the results. In Peru there are areas for improvement in access to information and communications, access to advanced education, and water and sanitation. In Ecuador, they are focusing on access to advanced education, personal rights, and environmental quality.
Additionally, they are committed to eliminating breaches of human rights through proper risk identification and remediation and empowering farmers, workers, and communities to optimize their profitability and ultimately remove poverty. Consequently, ECOM is able to adjust to new human rights laws, respond to the changing markets and investors' needs, and improve the living conditions of their farming communities.
With more than 170 years of experience, ECOM Trading is a world leader in sustainable cocoa, coffee, and cotton chains. It is also one of the top five global suppliers of cocoa beans.
According to ECOM Trading, 90% of the cocoa beans come from small family farms. With the increasing challenges to continuing to work on the farms, such as adapting to changing technologies, financial security, access to business management education, or gender disparities in access to support for their business, ECOM understood that its business cannot be sustainable if its workers are not supported and empowered to address them.
ECOM Trading developed the Smarter Cocoa Charter, an actionable plan that, with the collaboration of different NGOs and institutions, including the Social Progress Imperative, identified the most pressing social and environmental issues in their industry and communities of its supply chain and created a strategy to address them throughout their supply chain, which includes farms, communities, factories, and the marketplace.
In this plan, ECOM shows how they are working to improve farmer and worker livelihoods, protect and regenerate nature, and manage change through transparency and traceability of ethically sourced cocoa beans. In 2020, using the Social Progress Index, ECOM committed to establishing a living income baseline that allows their communities to have a decent and thriving quality of life. ECOM used the Social Progress Index results for Ecuador and Peru as a key guideline to measure the wellbeing of their farming communities and they also used the Index as a human rights impact assessment tool.
“We can’t say we are successful if we open the windows of our office and see that there is no shared value with what surrounds us. Part of the success of an organization is social progress. The Social Progress Index is a tool that helps you identify relevant issues and themes in terms of your communities’ necessities. We should be committed leaders that generate impact and build progress.” - María José Canales, Human Capital Manager, ECOM Trading.
ECOM is expanding its work by creating new partnerships in Ecuador and Peru to keep addressing the worst-performing social indicators identified in the results. In Peru there are areas for improvement in access to information and communications, access to advanced education, and water and sanitation. In Ecuador, they are focusing on access to advanced education, personal rights, and environmental quality.
Additionally, they are committed to eliminating breaches of human rights through proper risk identification and remediation and empowering farmers, workers, and communities to optimize their profitability and ultimately remove poverty. Consequently, ECOM is able to adjust to new human rights laws, respond to the changing markets and investors' needs, and improve the living conditions of their farming communities.
