Three reasons for attending our fringe event at the Labour Party conference

by 18th Sep 2014
Farmers preparing cocoa for drying at Ampenkro village, Ghana Farmers preparing cocoa for drying at Ampenkro village, Ghana © CARE

CARE International and the Fairtrade Foundation are hosting an event at this year’s Labour Party conference to bring together business, civil society and politicians – Inclusive chocolate? How can private sector partnerships ensure women farmers and workers get a bigger chunk of the benefits?

We’re debating in particular what global value chains need to do in order to deliver real benefits to women. It promises to be an exciting event:

  1. Hear real practical experience from the Mondelez Cocoa Life programme that delivers your favourite chocolate bars while working on enhancing the role of women
  2. Find out how NGOs and Fairtrade ensure that businesses really do provide benefits to poor farmers
  3. Find out Labour Party thinking on the roles of the private sector and civil society in development

Monday 22 September, 7.30–8.45pm

Room: Global Development Hub, The Charter Gallery, Manchester Central. Refreshments provided.

Panel members

Chair: Mike Gidney, Fairtrade Foundation
Business speaker: Jonathan Horrell, Mondelēz International
MP: Alison McGovern, Shadow Minister for International Development
Civil society: Gerry Boyle, CARE International

Gerry Boyle

Gerry led CARE International UK’s policy analysis and advocacy around value chains and dignified work. He originally joined CARE as the Senior Policy Adviser on Private Sector Engagement. With the advent of our new Global Programme Strategy which put a particular emphasis on women’s economic empowerment, his focus changed a little.

Gerry co-chaired the Bond Private Sector Working Group. Immediately before he joined CARE he worked for Oxfam as Head of Business Relations for about three years, but the vast majority of his career was spent as a management consultant including being a consulting Partner at Deloitte, where for a time he led Deloitte UK’s Consumer Business consulting practice, serving many major multinationals. Gerry's original degree was in Law from Oxford University, and in 2008 when he left Deloitte he did an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy at LSE.

One good thing I've read

Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom. It provides a framework for many people’s modern understanding of what is development, based on a profoundly human-centred approach rather than anything instrumental. And to check whether one personally is doing enough to fight poverty, I recommend Peter Singer’s The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty – it’s very clear and easy to read but very challenging! Finally, Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans: Rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world is a very readable guide to economic development which argues strongly against many of the prevailing orthodoxies.

Twitter: @gerryboyle10