ICCO (now part of Cordaid globally) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) whose work contributes to transforming agricultural systems towards environmental and financial sustainability. ICCO’s overall mission is to make markets more inclusive and accessible for smallholder farmers, agripreneurs, and small businesses by focusing on food and nutrition security, economic empowerment, and emergency response. ICCO works with farmers in various areas to strengthen the productivity and quality of their production and improve their farm management capacities. Their programs are focused on improving and diversifying food production, providing farmers better access to markets and financial services, developing a quality market system, enhancing farmers’ technical and business skills, and integrating disaster risk strategies for communities and businesses.
ICCO was the consortium lead for two G4AW projects in Southeast Asia, namely SMARTseeds in Indonesia and GREENcoffee in Vietnam starting from 2016. In SpiceUp, ICCO supports the consortium lead, Verstegen Spices and Sauces BV, through program management and Monitoring & Evaluation. ICCO’s participation in the SpiceUp project was showcased at the Asia Pacific Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production 2018 along with the local Indonesian partner, Penabulu Foundation. During the same year, ICCO hosted the seven Indonesian and Dutch consortium members for SpiceUp’s kickoff workshop in Bali, to begin the discussions on how the public private partnership can support 100,000 pepper farmers across Indonesia.
ICCO continues to be a key partner for managing and monitoring the progress of the SpiceUp project. Its involvement in key research and development activities to shape the mobile application to Indonesian pepper farmers’ needs has been extremely crucial for optimizing the benefits of the mobile application.