What to do when we face an increasing number of young people underperforming or with a risk of dropping out of school ? In front of this issue, teachers and parents are often powerless. Our project « Young Ambassadors of Fair Trade » aims at bringing solutions to this problem through an Eramus + project that will be civic and innovative. We offer the students to get involved in a school project which is not only academic but which teaches them to be, to live, to find their place in society, and to feel useful to the contruction of the world. Young people today need concrete situations to dedicate themselves to a project. They have a limited, sometimes even quite negative vision of poverty in some contries, of globalization, particularly as regards the field of trade exchanges, the issues of sustainable development and fair trade. This project will be led in partnership with fair trade NGOs and a Peruvian cooperative CECOVASA (which gathers together coffee producers) and will enable the students to face up a new culture as well as concrete situations of life and the work of people who fight to defend their dignity and to require fair trade in trade exchanges. We offer the students a vision of the world in which the values rhyme with justice and fairness and not only with benefit and mercantilism. This confrontation aims at opening the students'mind, at helping them develop their skills and their personality through meetings with persons who are different from them. We observe too that young people have a nonexistent civic conscience especially as regards Europe. It is true that they are very often relegated to a position of « consumers ». This is the reason why we have created a project in partnership with other European high schools situated in Belgium and Portugal. Together, we will present a resolution about fair trade to the European Commission. The schools will implement « European Youth Parliament » clubs. For many young people, the future is uncertain so they feel tempted to restrict themselves to immediacy. Being involved in this project during three years will enable them to understand that it is possible to build a long-term project, to choose consciously to be the ambassadors of fair trade beyond school time. Maybe some of them will enrol in studies related to sustainable development or fair trade. In order to find solutions to the issues of absenteeism and of dropping out of school, we offer the students to get involved in a project in which a serious commitment of each of them is necessary to implement it and bring it to fruition. Our ambition is to make them want to learn how to learn again , to acquire skills (especially as regards language-learning) and to give a sense to their learning. Young people drop out of school when they don't know who they are, what their assets are and what the future can bring. This project implies shool times with interdisciplinary activitis which will favor the opening up of the different school subjects and will make the acquisition of cross-disciplinary skills easier. A portfolio will be elaborated all along the project and will enable the students to highlight their experience. Thanks to the partnership with the federation « Artisans du Monde », OXFAM, CIDAC , and the Peruvian cooperative CECOVASA, they will be enabled to understand the importance of a civic and responsible involvement to develop fair trade may it be in Southern or in Northern countries. The participation of a Peruvian school the cooperative CECOVASA already works with will make the exchanges between the students easier as well as the intercultural meetings. The aim of the first year is to raise awareness on fair trade and on the issues of the indigenous producers. During the second year, an educationl shop will be created and managed by the students in the different schools. Co-animated activities organized with the NGOs will enable us to raise all the schools members' awareness on fair trade. The third year will be a time for spreading our project. A partnership with a nextdoor school will be launched to organize activities in the classes. The students who will be in final year of A-Level will become the tutors of the younge ones who will get involved in the projectin their turn. This way, the project will be permanent. During the three years, meetings with the schools are planned in order to get the students used to travelling in Europe without borders. The ambition of the project is to be spread throughout Europe. Thus, a planning of diffusion is implemented for the teachers and the European institutions. The partners of fair trade will create an educational toolbox dealing with the coffee trading chain as well as activities kits adapted to each audience. We hope that many school will join this initiative and will launch the project in their turn.
The project « Young Ambassadors of Fair Trade » gathered during three years 3 high schools and 3 NGOs working in the field of fair trade from France, Portugal and Belgium. The objectives of the project were to help with the prevention of early school leaving thanks to a responsible involvement of the young people and to innovative teaching methods centered on fair trade. Peruvian fair trade cooperatives (crafts and production of coffee) as well as Peruvian schools were also stakeholders of the project. The young people were enabled to discover the different aspects of fair trade step by step: the notion of solidarity with the little producers, the promotion and the enhancement of the indigenous cultures and their skills, the notion of political advocacy aiming at making the rules of international trade change, the notion of collective emancipation through the building of a social and ethical economy. The project went even beyond, as the young people were enabled to have a critical eye on various topics linked to fair trade: inequalities, poverty, development, intercultural considerations… Over three years, the young people acquired skills allowing them to carry out their involvement as young ambassadors of fair trade. They participated to various workshops, games, debates in their school; they did many visits and met with actors and volunteers of fair trade organizations. They were also involved in the implementation and the opening of a fair trade shop, and in five mobilities in Europe and one in Peru when they met a fair trade cooperative of coffee growers and a fair trade cooperative of craftsmen. This exceptional trip to Peru enabled some students to understand the real life of the little producers at the other end of the scale, to put a face to the products, to grasp the complexity of the process of coffee production and of crafts, and the ordeals face by the people who are the first link in the chain. The young people could also meet young Peruvians their age and exchange with them about their project. All along these three years, the adults and the young people also created intellectual productions: a pedagogical kit about the coffee sector composed of a board game, a video shot by the students; a pedagogical kit for all the schools that would like to start up a JACE group; a portfolio meant to exemplify, assess and record the skills acquired throughout the activities of the project. At the end of the project, the students were invited to pass on their message, to bear witness in other schools in order to become real ambassadors. To do so, they created various workshops and used the tools during the presentations. The different activities and the different subgroups who have been working through the three years were prolific. We shall name (even if not thoroughly) a group of young people who took part in a video workshop or shot videos, a group who got interested in advocacy with the help of the European Youth Parliament France, groups of students who led debates and meetings during the mobilities, a summit meeting with Members of the European Parliament in Brussels, young people who managed the creation of a board game on fair trade , visits of local alternatives in Belgium, France and Portugal which question our model of consumption (dairy farmers, oyster farmers, shared vegetable gardens, associations acting in deprived areas…), workshops in the schools involved in the project, in other schools too, an action taken against the Primark chain of stores to give a petition, workshops to think about fair trade, consumer society… The impact on the young people who got involved in the project could be measured, and helped to fight against early school leaving for some students. The young people who were part of the project took their studies in hand, they gave meaning to their scholarship and made well thought out professional choices for their future. Some young people got more particularly involved and took spontaneous initiatives in certain activities or workshops of the project. The partners of the project wish to see the energy of JACE continue in the schools and expand in others to create in the future a network of JACE groups similar to the one already existing in Belgium.