The People: Verité, a nonprofit organization that works to remove dangers and abuses in workplaces around the world by providing knowledge, skills, and tools to workers, employers, multinational companies, NGOs, trade unions, investors, and governments

Members of the global cocoa industry, including representatives from major companies such as Nestle and Cadbury

Leaders of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) concerned with child labor practices

The Challenge: High tensions existed between leaders of the cocoa industry and NGOs that advocate for fair labor practices. Many representatives of NGOs felt that industry representatives could not be trusted partners in the process of verifying surveys. Industry representatives felt unduly mistrusted and that some NGOs were not very familiar with conditions on the ground in millions of small cocoa farms. These conflicting groups needed to agree on a process for verifying child labor surveys to satisfy a U.S. government protocol, but neither side was satisfied with the other’s proposal.

The Shift: First, Mil Neipold of Verité, Grady McGonagill of McGonagill & Associates, and the Public Conversations Project’s Senior Associate Maggie Herzig conducted interviews to understand each party’s fundamental concerns.

Then they facilitated a one-day meeting in Boston in December of 2008 with fifty stakeholders from North America, Europe, and Africa.

Participants learned from each other, reduced sterotypes, and, by the end of the day, they broke through their impasse. They agreed on the composition of a verification board that proceeded to work effectively.