After a successful project, SAI’s local partners in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua maintain the momentum.
Impact on Participating Farms:
- 42% initiated or re-activated Joint Worker-Manager Committees to monitor health and safety
- 55% installed first-aid kits for employees
- 28% implemented a system for registering and addressing workplace issues
- 44% reported an increase in complaints resolved at the farm level
After four years, SAI’s Project Cultivar concluded on May 31, 2011. Since then, SAI’s local partners in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua continue to sustain progress by leveraging Cultivar methodologies in subsequent projects.
Project Cultivar worked with 38 farms and factories, and delivered training to over 4,000 workers, managers, and labor inspectors. Beginning with the topic of health and safety, Cultivar activities improved workplaces and fostered critical tripartite dialogue on labor rights. These efforts contributed to the reduction of complaints requiring outside support for resolution, and to a decrease in both accidents and staff turnover – the latter is an indirect measure of worker satisfaction and a managerial cost-saving.
In all three countries, project activities focused on capacity building to create an infrastructure for ongoing multi-stakeholder dialogue in four principal ways:
- Increasing awareness of national labor laws
- Empowering workers to exercise their rights
- Increasing managers’ capacity to comply with national labor law
- Equipping government inspectors with tools to enforce regulations
The table below demonstrates how SAI’s local partners are keeping the momentum going:
| Organization | Country | Sector | Post-Cultivar Activity | Supporter |
| CIAC (Center for Cultural Research & Action) | Dominican Republic | Sugarcane | Hosted 3 round-tables on migration, CSR, and labor | CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) |
| CIAC & INCAP (Institute for Local Culture & Self Reliance of the NW Region) | Dominican Republic | Bananas | Convening and facilitating capacity-building workshops and multi-stakeholder dialogue round-tables | ILO, Social Dialogue Programme |
| CDH (Center for Human Development) | Honduras | Banana, Melon | Impact-reporting methodologies institutionalized in CDH operations, e.g. development of a ‘culture of recording’ for activities and all project data | USDOL |
| CDH | Honduras | Academia, Banana, Melon | CDH & UNAH develop a first degree program on Social Dialogue, Labor Relation and Management Systems | UNAH (The National Autonomous University of Honduras) |
| PASE (Professionals for Corporate Social Auditing) | Nicaragua | Agriculture and Garment | Training of labor inspectors from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Labor | CIDA |
