Students are familiar with the term “Fairtrade” from product packaging or educational documentaries on television. The majority of them are surely aware of the poverty, the long working hours and the inhuman working conditions many farmers and workers of the third world have to endure daily. They are, however, ignorant about the impact their consumer behavior has on impoverished producers and laborers in the developing world. Our project “European students joining forces on fair trade” aims at raising our students’ awareness for global issues brought about by conventional trade and imprudent consumer choices. The students will become acquainted with a multitude of fair trade products and analyze their image, their production and their points of sale in all four participating countries. They will realize that the strategies to promote fair trade are regionally diverse (depending on country and region), but that overall too little is done to improve the pay and the working conditions in the developing world, and that action needs to be taken. The project experiences will inspire students to actively change their consumer behavior, to share their expert knowledge with others and to join forces with other European students to make a difference. Four European schools will work together on this project: San Nikolas Ikastola (Getxo, Spain), Zespół Szkół Ponadgimnazjalnych w Sierakowicach (Sierakowice, Poland), IIS "Ada Gobetti Marchesini-Luigi Casale" (Turin, Italy) and Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium (Ludwigshafen, Germany). For the last ten years, the Polish partner school has been involved in several Comenius, Leonardo Da Vinci, Erasmus+ and eTwinning projects. The Italian partner school has also been involved in Comenius and Erasmus+ projects. The Spanish and the German partner school have not been involved in an Erasmus+ project yet. The German school will be the coordinating school. While Fairtrade is our common core topic, each school will have a different focal point: Poland intends to focus on the clothing industry. The students will design a business model for a Fairtrade clothing company and take part in the organization “Clean Clothes Campaign”. Spain will concentrate on the use and reuse of rare earth metals that are ruthlessly used in large quantities for the production of mobile phones. Students will run a campaign to collect old mobile phones for recycling. Italy will focus on the production of fair trade food products, especially cocoa and coffee. Germany will center upon the economic aspect of fair trade food products. Students will launch their own school company that sells fair trade foods to students and teachers. Moreover, the German and the Polish school are aiming to achieve the “Fairtrade School” Certificate according to which the schools have to sell Fairtrade products, conduct classes on the matter or organise promotional local events. The “Fairtrade School” Certificate does not exist in Spain or Italy yet. During our two-year project, various students from all four schools will meet four times. In February 2018, students will visit a fair-trade coffee factory in Bilbao. Subsequently, they will develop ideas how to extend fair trade coffee production and selling. Additionally, the students will launch the campaign to collect old mobile phones for recycling. A local NGO in charge of receiving collected mobile phones will be visited and interviewed. In March 2018, students will visit the international exhibition CioccolaTo, which offers a variety of workshops and events on fair trade food products. In February 2019, students will visit Fair Pants in Gdansk, Poland, a fairtrade company producing underwear. In Mai 2019, the German school will host an action week in which all schools will share, exchange and present the common and individual results from the project period. Moreover, the students will multiply their knowledge and their experiences to the local school community by giving joint lessons to 12-14-year-old students and by using the already set up fair to present results and to raise awareness on fair trade. The first product of our project will be a guide listing shops in the vicinity of the four participating schools that offer Fairtrade products. Additionally, it displays and gives background information on the Fairtrade products on offer. Naturally, the guide also includes general information on Fairtrade. Our second product will be a blog on E-Twinning (Twinspace) which will be launched and regularly updated by the students. Twinspace offers the advantage that the blog will be visible to all European teachers registered on E-Twinning. Last but not least, videos produced by the participating students will serve as a modern way of documentation the project respectively promoting the issues around fair trade.
The project tackled the problem of Fair Trade ideology. The main goal was to strengthen the European identity of our students, to create transnational bonds, but most of all to shift focus from the nation state to internationalism and from "me" to "us". Based on the Feel-Think-Act approach, our first objective was to raise consciousness concerning conventional and fair trade products among European students. Secondly, students reflected on their own consumer behaviour and developed solutions in order to prevent the exploitation of workers and the endangerment of the environment. Finally, our students actively promoted fair trade consumption by informing other students, families and the local community. Currently radical nationalism is on the rise in more and more European countries. To counteract this tendency, students need to be offered the possibility to acquire the skills to successfully communicate and collaborate with people of other cultures. They also need to understand global connections.Therefore the need to experience Europe as a union need to collaborate in real face-to-face situations. We put transnational cooperation in every activity in the foreground. In addition to that, we did not only focus on the contact between the students of different countries, but also on real contact with local people from the world of school, economy, culture and every-day life. During the joint activities students worked on different topic connected with Fairtrade, prepared and conducted interviews for local firms concerning their involvement in the issues around fair trade, and met authorities in the field of interest of the project. We focused on particular issues in the following countries: Italy - food Spain - conflict minerals Poland - fast/fair fashion Germany - economics