To achieve Fairtrade Status your school must:
Goal 1: Have a Fairtrade Steering Group (50% of these should be young people)
Goal 2: Have a whole school Fairtrade policy written and set in place
Goal 3: Be committed to selling, promoting and using Fairtrade products
Goal 4: Learn about Fairtrade Issues
Goal 5: Be committed to promoting and taking action for Fairtrade in school and the wider community

To become a Fairtrade school you need to set-up a steering committee that includes at least 50% children, and they need to help create a policy statement. This, and the values of Fairtrade, allow schools to use the children’s voice to explore and then express attitudes about poverty reduction, trade, co-operatives and consumerism, and direct actions including events and teaching in the curriculum.

For a webquest, an online activity, that takes your students through making a policy statement for the school council click here.

For our guide to Fairtrade click here.

The first step you need to do is to register with the Fairtrade schools site: click here

You registration is the first part of the application process, you can then use the site for reporting how well you are doing, and submitting your evidence that you are becoming a Fairtrade School.

It is important to recognise that Fairtrade is about business, not about charity. That it fits into the business, enterprise and financial literacy curriculum areas. You can use it to get your children exploring about the importance of co-ops and social enterprises as development tools around the world, and then get them to set-up their own co-ops or social enterprises to run projects like a fairtrade shop, a playground buddy system, anti-bullying projects, fund-raising events…

For more advice about using social enterprise see the participation section of this website or visit our Banking on the World project.