Barry Callebaut, a Belgian-Swiss chocolate company, has committed to eliminating child labor from its supply chain entirely by 2025 through its Forever Chocolate initiative. Achieving this across a set of suppliers spanning three continents is a massive challenge, requiring analysis of accurate, real-time data to evaluate the effectiveness of remediation activities in the field. To support this initiative, Quoin partnered with the company to develop a custom version of the Primero case management platform, used globally by over thousands of child protection and other social services professionals.
Barry Callebaut Pilots Primero to Combat Child Labor
Jack MiszencinMay 22, 2023
Quoin developed a number of features for the platform that catered to the particular needs of Barry Callebaut’s remediation officers. When reviewing feedback from users, we found that working in areas with variable internet connectivity was a particular pain point. Primero, as a Progressive Web App (PWA), works inside a browser in both online and offline scenarios. However, when users with spotty connectivity used the app, they would rapidly switch between Primero’s online and offline modes. This made it difficult to predict how the app would behave. Would it behave like the site normally did online? Would it lose internet while the user was trying to save changes? Or would it behave with the limited set of functionality available to offline users?
To allow users to work with more predictability in field conditions (for instance, on a farm, or in a rural community center), Quoin introduced a feature to let users switch into “Field Mode”: a sort of voluntary offline mode. With this new mode, a user can pick out the cases they’ll need to work with throughout the day in the morning when they have internet connectivity. Then, when they are heading out to a rural area to interview a child or lead a vocational training session, the user switches into an offline version of the app where they can perform data entry without having to worry about their phone constantly trying to search for cell signal. You can think of this like downloading songs or podcasts to listen to before you get on a plane or the subway.
Selecting Cases for Use Offline
The Mark for Offline feature lets users select which cases they will need to use throughout their work day and cache this information in their browser temporarily. This ensures that if and when users lose connectivity, they can continue their work uninterrupted.
Working in Field Mode
After marking cases for later use offline, the user then turns on Field Mode before heading to an area with unreliable internet access. This gives users a predictable, robust experience in areas where internet connectivity oscillates constantly between weak and non-existent signal.
While Barry Callebaut’s users were the first to directly request this type of feature, they will not be the only ones to benefit from it. Across the globe, humanitarians and social workers use Primero wherever the children they serve happen to be located - often in remote areas with little internet connectivity or reliable electricity. Because Primero is open source, and a Digital Public Good, Barry Callebaut’s investment in new features like Field Mode benefits humanitarian agencies, non-governmental organizations, and social services agencies working to serve vulnerable populations in extremely difficult conditions across the world.
