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Day Four: Fair trade

> Morning session
> Afternoon session

Morning session: fair trade

Key focus: We all share responsibility for making the world a better, fairer place. Particular emphasis on fair trade.

Activities

> Whose responsibility? (30 mins)
> Bonkers about bananas (45 mins)
> Going Bananas (1 hour)

Background information for teachers
Millennium Development Goal 8 aims to build a global partnership for development. This eighth goal is very important as it complements the other seven. Although it is essential that developing countries direct their own development and implement policies to achieve the other seven goals, the eighth goal shows what the world could do as a ‘community’ to aid this development. One target of this goal is to ‘develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory’.

After introducing MDG 8, today’s activities enable pupils to take a closer look at fair trade. The world trading system is currently very unfair, and biased against developing countries. The rules mean that richer countries can protect themselves in certain ways; for example, by giving their farmers subsidies. Trade could bring prosperity to developing countries, if the rules were applied evenly.

Activity 1: Whose responsibility? (30 min)

You will need:
> MDG 8 poster (67KB pdf)
> MDG 8 poster background notes (32KB pdf)
> A selection of foods from various parts of the world

Show the class the poster for MDG 8 and read the story, ‘Making poverty a thing of the past’. Recap the issues covered on Day 2 and Day 3, and as a class, brainstorm who has responsibility for achieving these goals and making the world a better place. (It is governments who have the power to do this, but ordinary people can put pressure on them to make sure they do.)

Show the class a selection of food from various parts of the world. Find out where each item comes from and use this to demonstrate how much we are linked to the rest of the world through our diet.

Activity 2: Bonkers about bananas (45 min)

You will need:
> Internet access

Use the photo-stories from Bonkers about bananas! as a starting point for discussion. Go on to the photostory, The travels of a banana, and then to Banana farmers, which profiles four banana growers from the Windward Islands.

Use the banana farmers’ stories, together with the stories from farmers in Ghana (Kuapa Kokoo) as inspiration for role plays and interviews where a news reporter is interviewing a farmer about the advantages of fair trade.

Activity 3: Going bananas (1 hour)

You will need:
> Photocopies of the job cards (32KB pdf). Pupils in the same group will need copies of the same job card.
> Two large drawings of a banana for class display. One should be blank, the other divided into sections according to the income received by different groups, as illustrated.

	Blank banana
	Banana divided into sections - showing actual split of income from a banana

Divide the class into five groups. Each group will take on one role. Give each group enough job cards for each pupils to be able to see one.

Put a large drawing of a banana up and tell the class it costs 30p. Ask each group to decide what ‘share’ they should earn of the total banana price. They should consider the amount of work involved, what their job entails and the expenses they have to meet.

After five minutes, ask each group to present its case. Write the amounts on the banana. If the total comes to more than 30p, hold a discussion between the groups and get them to negotiate a division of income between themselves.

Now reveal the actual division of income by showing the banana drawing marked u with the true income of each group. Discuss the following points:

• Who gets what?
• How do the growers feel?
• What division would be fairer?
• How could the growers get a better deal?

From Go Bananas, Oxfam 2000

After the role-play conclude the morning's work by highlighting how we, as consumers, all have an effect on the lives of those in other countries through the choices we make when shopping for food.

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