kids doing fairtrade

For a few months now I have been volunteering at my childrens school, helping the teacher run a lunch time fairtrade group.  We spent the first year working on gaining fairtrade status for our school.  You can of course still do fair trade without getting the status,  but it was a good process to go through as it gave the group a focus to get us started and warm us up for future activities.

Now that our application has been submitted we are looking forward and making plans for the next school year.  At our weekly meetings the ideas flow freely.  We have a long list of exciting options and next week we'll have a planning meeting to narrow them down and decide which ones we want to move forward with ....

I'm not sure there are enough days in the school year to cope with it all.  One of the best ideas has been to do an interactive assembly around fairtrade, something along the lines of who wants to be a millionaire where the audience votes...... a message i think,  to us adults that our usual assembly offerings are boring and old fashioned!  Along side this they are working on a fairtrade section for the school website and developing lesson plans for the geography teacher to use with first years.

In writing this blog I've been trying to think about why they are so enthusiastic in their participation.  It goes without saying that they are all fully on board with the principles of fair trade... being acutely aware of the unfairness of it all.  But it's more than that.  Participating in the fairtrade group allows them to put into practice a whole array of things they are learning at school.   We have the computer expert who is doing the webpage,  the mental maths expert who loves to do the tuck shop, the artist who is making our banner,  the ideas person who is listened to.  The group allows them all to do what they are good at and be listened to by their piers.   They run the group, chair it and take the minutes .... they are in charge, they are awesome and they love it!

One of their favourite activities is to face the public.  We run a Fair trade friday tuck shop and sell tea coffee and snacks at parents evenings and other school events.  These are always the most popular activities and the kids are queuing up to volunteer.  So that I don't have to 'choose' someone,  we have a points system (inspired by another FT school, Stonelaw high) whereby points are given for the least popular activities and the students with the most points get to do the things they want.   ..... not sure quite how this will work at the moment, the problem being that they all attend every activity and so all have the same number of points!

I'm told that exciting things are being planned for fairtrade, ethics and the curriculum so hopefully there will be updates on this topic.