To celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 fairandfunky held TWO fairandfunky Fairtrade Conferences for Schools in both Huddersfield and Batley. The conferences were fully booked with 170 students and 40 teachers from across Kirklees coming together to celebrate and learn about Fairtrade in creative workshops from Fair Grounds, Fair Connections, The Fairtrade Foundation, Coeur de Xocolat and fairandfunky.
Four different interactive and creative workshops took delegates ‘Around The World’ to discover how Fairtrade can change the world for producers and their communities.
Huddersfield Conference Champion – Stafflex – present delegates with certificate and Fairtrade footballs
In Huddersfield on March 4th a very snowy welcome greeted delegates at The Creative and Media Studio School! We were thrilled that Conference Champions Stafflex braved the adverse weather conditions to present certificates and Fairtrade footballs to all participating schools. The weather was a lot kinder a week later at The Al Hikmah Centre in Batley.
With Fair Connections, students met Fairis – a Fairtrade frog from Nepal (who was VERY excited by the snow!) Together with his puppet friends, Fairis shared the stories of producers in Nepal learning how Fairtrade has a direct and positive impact on the lives of so many women, men and their families.Through activities and story-telling children were not only introduced to the Fairtrade mark, but also learnt about the WFTO logo.
Fairis the frog wasn’t the only one excited by the snow! Fraser from Natural Beverages travelled from Bristol to deliver Fairtrade fruit juice and smoothies for all delegates – he had a good chat with the children about juice and where to find the best sledging field.
With Fair Grounds, participants travelled to the Philippines and learnt about families who are members of a fair trade co-operative making recycled newspaper products. Students were able to have a go themselves, creating a recycled newspaper photo frame, gaining an understanding of the skilled work involved and the importance of fair trade and recycling.
In the very popular chocolate workshop from Coeur de Xocolat, students headed to Ghana to discover all about the journey of chocolate from bean to bar, delegates watched a video about life as a cocoa farmer and took part in an all sensory chocolate tasting session!
In the fairandfunky ‘Play Fair!’ workshop students met the workers in Pakistan who make Fairtrade footballs. Delegates found out just how difficult it is to make a football and discovered how important Fairtrade is to producer communities.
The schools team from The Fairtrade Foundation joined the Batley conference and took delegates to all corners of the world to discover just how many different countries produce the food we eat and the clothes we wear every day.
Jo Cox MP with workshop providers and with Batley Conference Champions – Traidcraft.
We were also delighted to welcome Conference Champions Traidcraft to the Batley Conference, and their rep John put Fairtrade on the stage in a very moving play.
Another very special guest Jo Cox MP held a brilliant Q&A session with the students before presenting all schools with their certificate and Fairtrade footballs.
We had a brilliant day at both conferences with lots of great feedback from students and teachers – “The conference was so inspiring, informative and very interesting – the children loved it and we can’t wait to take the things they’ve learned back to school.” Teachers from Gomersal St Mary’s Primary School.
Events like this wouldn’t happen without brilliant volunteers – HUGE thank you to Fairtrade Batley and Spen for helping out in Batley and bringing so much energy, enthusiasm and banana suits!
Another THANK YOU to all our Conference Partners:
Kirklees Fairtrade
All supported the conference and enabled us to give all delegates an event bag filled with Fairtrade goodies to take away and continue Fairtrade conversations at home and school!
Fairtrade conversations and action certainly continue for fairandfunky. In May we host our first fairandfunky Fairtrade Conference for Schools in Halifax and our range of Fairtrade workshops are available to any school or community group at anytime.
Here’s to another year of empowering people to take their own little steps to change the world!
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