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Exploring money through
Fairtrade

  • Important documents:

    Professional reading:

  • Learners use a newspaper article and images about emojis to think about what representation means. They will consider their own representation and how widely they see themselves and others represented in their daily lives and school settings.  

  • Learners explore different types of bias that exist through an advertising poster. They will look at biases relating to protected characteristics such as race, gender and religion, and how if unchallenged they can facilitate racist and discriminatory ideas.

  • Learners look critically at images and media reporting of climate activist Vanessa Nakate and ways these can create, reinforce, and deepen biases we hold. Learners will explore different types of bias that exist, including racial bias, and ways that racial bias can lead to silencing in the media and beyond.

  • Learners reflect on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk about the dangers of presenting people and places as a single story which go on to become the presumed truth. They consider how those with power hold the ability to define and shape the stories of people and places by making decisions about how they are told, who tells them, when they are told, and how many are told.

Unfair rules and ways of working, buying and selling exist in the world and discriminate disproportionately against people living in the Global South. These systems have their roots in colonialism when white Europeans carried out the systematic dehumanisation and oppression of different groups of people around the world, taking control by different means including political, violent, economic, cultural, social, religious and linguistic.

During colonisation, white Europeans realised the potential market for cocoa as a way of exerting power and growing their wealth. The growing of cocoa was moved from South America, where it originated, to countries in West Africa that Europeans had had already colonised. Colonial rule kept the most valuable aspects of the cocoa value chain within the hands of colonisers. Even in cases where African producers managed to own their cocoa plots, their access to cocoa processing remained limited due to high tariffs imposed on processed chocolate by colonial powers. (Read more on Beyond Beans). As a result, many financially disadvantaged African producers were compelled to sell cacao beans as low-priced commodities. This system is maintained to this day, showing how colonial power, systems and racism continue to impact the world we live in.   

Today, movements, groups and organisations are working together to enable fairer systems of trade to exist which empower and protect the rights of those in the Global South who have been systematically discriminated against. Fairtrade aims to promote fairer trading conditions and empower producers to take back decision-making processes to strengthen their position and take more control over their lives.   

Anti-Racist Curriculum Principles 

Our children and young people will: be supported to reflect on positionality, privilege and power, and to unlearn bias, prejudice and divisiveness. 

Our children and young people will: be critical thinking global citizens that challenge discrimination and prejudice through an understanding and awareness of the behaviours, practices and processes that create injustice in the world. 

UNCRC Articles

Article 2: The right to non-discrimination  

Article 17: The right to access to information from the media 

Article 29: The goals of education

Additional support:

Working with the Framework
Suggested Reading Lists
Parents, Carers and the Community
Social Action and Civic Participation
Using the Teaching Materials