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Fairtrade Fortnight 2011 Schools Briefing: The Theme, Activity Ideas & Materials

The Date Monday 28 February 2011 – Sunday 13 March 2011 Summary of the campaign Following 2010’s one million and one Fairtrade Swaps during Fairtrade Fortnight, for 2011 we’re going a step further, showing off what’s behind the swaps and why Fairtrade is important. This year we have a particular focus on cotton and cotton producers in the West African countries of Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso and Chad. We want to demonstrate that we want a fairer deal for farmers by showing off Fairtrade cotton (and anything else Fairtrade you can get your hands on!) and highlighting the injustices that make Fairtrade a vital lifeline for cotton farmers in West Africa and farmers all over the world. Help us to show off a different way of doing trade!

In London, we suggest two fun ways to celebrate this Fairtrade Fortnight in your school:

• Create / decorate Fairtrade cotton bunting and help us smash the world bunting record!

• Host a fashion show to show off your label!

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& learn about cotton

Leading up to Fairtrade Fortnight, get students thinking about Fairtrade cotton and why it’s important. When Fairtrade Fortnight arrives, they will be ready to show off what they’ve learnt by decorating their own, unique bunting messages which can be proudly displayed in the corridors, playground or assembly hall. You can find suggested lesson plans, activities, information sources and materials:

West African cotton farmers are amongst the poorest in the world, often not generating enough income from their crops to even cover basic production costs. Meanwhile cotton farmers in the U.S and EU (and to a lesser extent China and India) have enjoyed $47bn in subsidies over the past nine years – cash that has protected their farmers against the volatility of the international cotton market by guaranteeing them a minimum (often generous) price. West African cotton farmers receive no subsidies to guarantee a minimum price or bail them out and subsequently struggle against often-impossible odds to compete. This wall of subsidies has fatally undermined West African cotton farmers’ ability to trade their way out of poverty – they are trapped. Cotton has reached the agenda of the World Trade Organisation who recognise the human cost of these trade distorting subsidies. There is still a long way to go in convincing the EU and U.S. to reduce their trade distorting subsidies, thereby giving the poorest cotton farmers in the world a chance to work their way out of poverty. General: www.fairtrade.org.uk/cotton for useful links to information about Fairtrade cotton, the campaign, the producers, the celebrity fashion show, Fairtrade cotton retailers. Educational films, fact sheets, FAQs, presentations: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/products/cotton/more_on_cotton.aspx Ages 7 – 11: background information to cotton & lesson plans http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/clothes_line http://www.fairtradewales.com/schools/resources/493 Ages 12+: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2010/s/students_brief.pdf http://www.fairtradewales.com/schools/resources/493 http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Cotton-Cameroon-6007069 (check!) Documentary for KS3: http://www.teachers.tv/videos/learning-from-the-news-cotton-shortage-and-fair-trade (focusing on international cotton prices and the argument for Fairtrade cotton)

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There are lots of ideas for how to do this here. To help you plan your Fairtrade Fortnight Schools event, here are two that we’ve selected:

A bunting party to

Help the Fairtrade Foundation make the world’s longest string of hand-designed, bespoke bunting! Current world record: 2,696 metres. The bunting is a way to demonstrate support your for Fairtrade and show off your label as well as forming a part of our wider campaign for trade justice – specifically for West African cotton farmers. We will be using this bunting to call on rich countries to drop their trade distorting subsidies that are keeping poor farmers trapped in poverty. It’s going to be a long, hard campaign and that’s why we need a long piece of bunting! We’re aiming to smash the world record for the longest string of hand-designed individual, hand-made bunting, currently at 2,696 metres. We are aiming to beat this record soundly and reach 4,350 metres (over two and a half miles!) This means we need at least 12,500 decorated flags returned to us - one for each Fairtrade cotton farmer in Mali & Burkina Faso. Please help us reach this target by painting, drawing or sewing a piece of bunting to express what Fairtrade looks like to you! For more information, please read our report ‘The Great Cotton Stitch Up’ and check www.fairtrade.org.uk/cotton.

What you need for your bunting party:

• Amateur artists keen to show off their support • Paints, pens, crayons, sequins, dried

When should I hold the bunting decorating event? We really want everyone to make their bunting during Fairtrade Fortnight 2011 – 28 February to 13 March, so try and organise your bunting-making event in this period. You could do it alongside another event – a fashion show, coffee morning or film-screening – or as a classroom activity, giving students the opportunity to show off what they’ve learnt about Fairtrade through their bunting statements. Check out the Fairtrade Fortnight 2011 Action Guide and the Fairtrade Fortnight 2011 Schools Action Guide for loads of ideas for events and activities. Do’s for your bunting party: - Fairtrade bunting kit: order up to 5 pack with 22 pieces of blank Fairtrade bunting from

www.fairtrade.org.uk/fortnight (available mid-late December) - Get a group of people together to decorate your bunting flags - community groups,

schools, college students, workplaces – anyone can get involved - Get creative – you might find some of these useful: all sorts of paints; glitter and glue;

sewing kit including coloured embroidery thread; scraps of material, sequins, buttons and other leftovers from the sewing box to stick or sew on; Fairtrade quinoa pasta, old bits of cloth& anything you can think of!

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- Write messages – demonstrate your support for Fairtrade and demand a fair deal for cotton farmers

- Invite your MP or MEP to your bunting-making party and ask them to support the cotton campaign

- Show off your bunting – display it where you can until you send it back to us and share photos of your bunting by posting them on our Flickr and Facebook sites

- Let the local press know that you are taking part in a national Guinness World Record attempt

- Check www.fairtrade.org.uk/fortnight regularly for updates and template press releases - Create a flag with the name of the group, school, workplace etc. that created the

bunting that can identify your contributions when they are stitched onto the final record-breaking tape

- Use all the bunting you order from us or pass it on to someone who will – we haven’t got an infinite supply!

- Send your bunting back to us

Please don’t - Use other scrap material for making bunting triangles. We would like all the bunting to

be Fairtrade certified cotton and we have bought this from Fairtrade farmers – ensuring that they get the fair price and premium

- Cut the bunting any smaller than it is – these triangles have been specially cut to fulfil the Guinness World Record requirements

- Return your bunting to us sewn onto a line – we need the individual decorated triangles returned to us for our stitchers to sew onto one continuous tape.

What will happen with the bunting? It is vital that we receive your bunting by 16th April so our team of stitchers will be waiting to sew all the bunting flags onto our specially manufactured tape. In order to qualify as a Guinness World Record we need to string all the bunting up on one day and we want to do this on World Fair Trade Day – Saturday 8 May 2011. Return the bunting to: Bunting for Justice (tbc) Fairtrade Foundation Ibex House, 42-47 Minories LONDON EC3N 1DY

You can return it to us with Freepost, but this will cost us money. If you need to use Freepost, please add the following as the first line of the address: FREEPOST RSKR – ZCLY – CHZR

Please include a sheet with the details of who decorated the bunting (including your borough, school, university, workplace etc.), how many flags were completed, and a contact name and email address. That way we can keep in touch and let you know how our world record attempt is progressing. Include any photos if you have them!

Other plans for the bunting Lobby of Parliament; World Trade Organisation meeting Nov 2011; More events tba. Can we get our bunting back? Unfortunately we won’t be able to return your bunting to you. The final string of bunting will be used throughout the campaign to demonstrate that we want a fairer deal for cotton farmers. But if you give us your details when you send your bunting in, so we can let you know what’s happening with it and the effect that it’s having.

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with a fashion show

SHOW OFF YOUR LABEL WITH A FASHION DASH OR A POP UP FASHION SHOW

Picture the scene – there’s a sudden blast of music, cameras flash, models appear and passers-by, stunned by the spectacle, cotton on to Fairtrade. Or – how about Fairtrade fashion with tea? If you’re organising a coffee morning, bunting party or wine tasting this Fortnight, could roaming models show off the finest in Fairtrade cotton fashion as part of the event? Check out the ‘Cotton on the Catwalk’ fashion show guide for a list of companies offering Fairtrade cotton, many of whom may be happy to lend you outfits for the event. fairtrade.org.uk/fashionshowguide

RED CARPET FAIRTRADE MOMENTS

Make everyone a star for the day with a red carpet Fairtrade moment. Set up a red carpet (red card/red wallpaper/red chalked walkway) leading from the gates of local schools and colleges or in a shopping centre. Invite students, staff or passers-by to sashay showing off their favourite Fairtrade cotton fashion and promenade with a pineapple. Ask your celebs to show off why they’re proud of this label and make sure the media

and paparazzi (or parents!) are out in force to get those cameras clicking. Fairtrade London campaign is planning a big ‘red carpet Fairtrade moment’ on Sat 12 March (venue tbc). This will be an opportunity to showcase the best of the fashion shows and other events happening during Fairtrade Fortnight. Every Fairtrade Borough campaign will have the chance to be represented. Get in touch with your local group if you are interested in getting involved. http://www.fairtradelondon.org.uk/my-borough/b

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Use your events to lobby your MP or MEP Please invite your MP or MEP to your event in order to lobby them on the subsidies issue. The Fairtrade Foundation will have briefings available on this soon. You can contact them through: www.writetothem.com.

Shopping for Fairtrade Cotton product Why not get your hands on and body into some Fairtrade cotton! You can find plenty of Fairtrade cotton products including uniforms, fashion, tea towels, underwear, etc. at this link: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/products/cotton/stockists.aspx & scroll down to ‘school wear suppliers’ (including M&S, John Lewis Partnership, Tesco, Makara, Kool Schools, Cotton Roots).

General Fairtrade Fortnight Campaigning Materials: Order your Fairtrade bunting (up to 5 pack with 22 pieces of blank Fairtrade bunting) from www.fairtrade.org.uk/fortnight (available mid-late December) Fairtrade Fortnight 2011 Action Guide: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2010/c/campaigner_action_guide_2011_final.pdf Fairtrade Fortnight 2011 Schools Action Guide: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2010/s/schools_action_guide_insert_f14_2011.pdf There is a wealth of downloadable materials, banners, badges, etc. from http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/show_off_your_label/how_to_show_off

Fairtrade London Campaign Support If you’d like to discuss any of the above, support in getting in touch with other schools or campaigners in your borough, please contact Fairtrade London Schools Co-ordinator Miranda Sikkens

Fairtrade London, 2nd floor, 94 White Lion Street, London N1 9PF

(t) 020 7837 2272 miranda.sikkens@fairtrade.org.uk

www.fairtradelondon.org.uk