Step 1. Spreading the word
- Holding a successful Fairtrade stall
- Sweet Injustice: The chocolate game
- Winning them over: Frequently Asked Questions
- From football to fashion shows: More ideas for Fairtrade events
Step 2. Get Fairtrade products stocked in your school or university
- Getting Fairtrade stocked
- Good answers to bad excuses: Catering Mythbusting
Step 3. Becoming a Fairtrade school or university
After a bit of active campaigning: running regular stalls and infusing passers-by with the Fairtrade message, you´ve hopefully worked up an appetite — for trade justice and for Fairtrade goods! Now, obviously you and your group can’t run a stall all day everyday, and you can´t cater for all the hungry students demanding Fairtrade products. But your school or university caterers can — and your next challenge is to get them to stock some Fairtrade products. This should be really quite straightforward as today there is no good excuse for a catering outlet not to sell Fairtrade.
However, there may be initial reluctance, as staff may not be familiar with Fairtrade, and they will have to do a little work to find the right supplier of Fairtrade catering products and arrange these supplies.
Don’t be put off — there are are hundreds of schools and universities who now sell Fairtrade in their canteens — if they can sell Fairtrade, why can’t yours do the same?
To persuade your school, college or university to sell Fairtrade we suggest you:
- Go and talk to the catering staff first. If you ask, they may just agree to sell Fairtrade straight away. Explain to them why Fairtrade is important, and that many other schools and universities are already selling it. If they ask about getting supplies you could refer them to the Fairtrade Foundation website, which gives details of catering suppliers
However, you may need to work a bit harder to persuade them…
- Demonstrate the support you have and explain how you are going to increase and maintain it. This is especially important for catering managers as you need to convince them that there will be demand for any Fairtrade products that they stock. You could include the results of any surveys you may have done to show demand for Fairtrade.
The `Fairtrade is Divine group´ at Arthur Mellows Village College had done lots of Fairtrade campaigning. They raised awareness of Fairtrade through stalls, noticeboards and presentations to lower years, promoted Fairtrade at school council meetings and developed an intranet site. However, the group felt they needed evidence of the commercial viability of Fairtrade for their proposal to get Fairtrade stocked in school canteen.
Their innovative solution was to set up an ordering scheme with the local Oxfam shop; enabling staff to order Fairtrade products on a half termly basis. The scheme has been running for over a year and has been so successful that the group have offered the service to sixth-formers too. When they asked the headteacher earlier this year to commit to stocking Fairtrade products in school outlets the answer was a resounding yes!
Queen Elizabeth School in Hexham set up a similar scheme with the local Traidcraft shop. So if you´re having trouble convincing official people that people will buy Fairtrade, prove it to them by supplying it yourself!
Petitions are a great way of demonstrating demand for Fairtrade products. Aim to get as many students as possible to sign it before presenting it to your Catering Manager, Vice-Chancellor or Headteacher. Good places to collect signatures include canteens and cafes, and at the beginning of lectures and classes.
The most effective way of convincing them, however, might be to demonstrate consumption and purchase of Fairtrade products. One way to do this is to set up regular stalls and sell Fairtrade products rather than giving them away — you can show the caterers your receipts and prove Fairtrade is profitable! Another way is to set up an ordering scheme with a local shop that sells Fairtrade, for instance an Oxfam or Traidcraft shop.
Explain the action they need to take. Include basic details about the range of Fairtrade products available and about suppliers that sell Fairtrade products.
Explain how you can help them. For example, by researching suppliers if you haven’t already done this. Also — assure them that your group will continue to organise promotional events and raise support for Fairtrade to ensure that it does sell when it’s introduced.
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