St Edmund's Catholic School—Portsmouth 

Developer Level - Practical Strand

Our Justice and Peace Group have been an active element within our school community for a number of years. Each year, the group enter fully into FAIRTRADE fortnight.

In March, 2014, the students elected a committee to organise various activities. Both staff and students hosted a ‘Curry and Justice’ FAIRTRADE evening, which was linked to the FAIRTRADE Campaign, ‘To make bananas fair’. They advertised, made tickets and charged per adult, for children and also a family ticket.

Both pupils and staff organised an evening that consisted of various stalls and activities:

  • Traidcraft, raffle, tombola, map activity, tin can topple, number of sweets in jar
  • Portsmouth FAIRTRADE forum (Banana petition, leaflets etc.,) & World Development Movement
  • Help Palestine
  • CAFOD
  • The Rowans
  • Faith and Football
  • Upcycled Jewellery
  • Filipino Jewellery
  • Shop Equality
  • Cake stall (Friends of St Edmund’s)
  • Phoenix cards
  • Sainsbury (food tasting)

A brief drama was presented on FAIRTRADE and the ‘Foncho’ campaign. A guest speaker came to highlight the importance of the campaign and the importance of FAIRTRADE in developing countries

FAIRTRADE products of curry and rice were cooked by one of our RE staff and served by our students and the proceeds from the tickets were sent to the FAIRTRADE ORGANISATION.

It was a fantastic night as parents, staff, students and people from the wider community attended. An awareness of other organisations was also provided through the various stalls as well as a meal shared and an understanding of FAIRTRADE and products were purchased.

We have links with the wider community who provided stalls and attended the evening as well as from our local primary schools. Together with our local primary feeder schools we produce a FAIRTRADE ‘Schools in partnership’ Newsletter.