28 The Hershey Company | 2021 ESG Report Cocoa The Big Picture Our Company Cocoa Responsible Sourcing and Human Rights Environment Our People Youth Community About This Report Supporting Women in Achieving In addition to providing an invaluable service Economic Independence to farmers, in 2021, these community pruning teams provided 372 young adults (39 of them Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) women) in cocoa-growing communities with are a simple, accessible way to help individuals valuable skills and knowledge about cocoa — especially women — and communities farming, while also helping to support their learn about saving, borrowing and investing families with extra income. responsibly. The groups’ members are likely to be either completely unbanked or unable to Continuing Our Work to Understand qualify for a loan through traditional financial and Promote Farmer Incomes providers. In VSLAs, loans are based on trust among group members. The groups also create In 2021, we published our Living Wage & Income a small solidarity fund that is dispensed either Position Statement and began taking additional for collective problems (such as repairing a steps to understand the gaps between farmers’ village water pump) or individual emergencies. current income and a living income. Working Hershey now directly supports nearly 200 VSLAs with the research firm Ipsos, we implemented a with 5,879 members, 79% of whom are women. new biannual impact assessment methodology Thanks to collective savings, the VSLAs provided to capture data on farmer and household an invaluable source of funds to boost financial income. This research will allow us to measure resilience and security during the pandemic. the efficacy of our programs in addressing farmer livelihoods, including improving income. In Empowering Youth conducting our research, we use benchmarks To break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, endorsed by the Living Income Community of today’s youth in cocoa communities (defined Practice (LICOP), which defines living income as: as 15- to 35-year-olds) need to be equipped “The net annual income required for a household with life skills, technical and vocational skills in a particular place to afford a decent standard and the practical knowledge and tools needed of living for all members of that household.” to become self-sufficient community leaders Collection of baseline data was completed in late of the future. We support youth economic 2021 for Côte d’Ivoire and will finish in Ghana in empowerment through access to vocational early 2022. Initial results suggest that while only training, land tenure documents and the a small percentage of cocoa farming households development of income-earning opportunities earn a household income above the Living such as community pruning teams. Pruning Income Benchmark, the majority are above the teams are groups of up to 10 young adults who national poverty line in Côte d’Ivoire. Further help provide essential pruning services to cocoa analysis will be focused on better understanding farmers in their communities. Regular pruning how the Cocoa For Good program can support of cocoa trees helps to prevent tree mold and farmer livelihoods to increase the percentage of diseases and reduces the need for farmers to households above the Living Income threshold. apply agrochemicals and pesticides. For our key performance metrics from the year, see page 31.