Be aware, trade fair – European students establishing the idea of Fair Trade at their schools in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands Erasmus Project

Project Title

Be aware, trade fair – European students establishing the idea of Fair Trade at their schools in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue)

Project Summary

In the course of this trilateral partnership between three schools, the Swedish Lerbäckskolan Lund, the German Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Radevormwald and the Dutch De Ring van Putten Secondary School in Spijkenisse, there has been a central focus on broadening awareness and acquiring profound background knowledge on the topic of Fair Trade. Experiences and various approaches to the topic in the three partner countries have been compared by the participating students with the intention to actively promote and establish Fair Trade products within the partner organisations and the local communities.
One strength of our project lies in international encounters, which enabled a high number of pupils to travel to a European partner country, meet each other in person and learn from each other about our topic experiencing the implementation of the concept in the participating countries. In the course of their stays abroad, pupils learned a lot about Fair Trade through excursions (e.g. to museums, Fair Trade shops, local institutions, etc.) and talks by experts. In addition, they worked on the details of the topic in groups of mixed nationalities. Pupils’ results of research have been visualised in various ways (e.g. posters, power point presentations, films, brochures, reports, etc.). The gained knowledge was then used to plan and put into practice activities in order to promote and establish Fair Trade at our schools.
The project language was English, but German, Swedish and Dutch were also used occasionally, especially to inform about results within the community of each partner organisation.
The participating students were 13-14 years old (class 8) and there has been a new group of participants in every year of the project. Between 2015 and 2018, approximately 180 pupils were able to participate in the project work and visit one of the partner schools in the course of the project.
Results completed in the course of the project (e.g. reports, brochures, presentations, films, students’ own fair products etc.) were distributed and presented, among the participants themselves, but also on Twin Space, on the schools’ webpages and in locals newspapers, as well as exhibited in the partner schools. We also looked at the relevance of Fair Trade in the curricula of the three countries and partly managed to reach an increased relevance and promotion of this important topic (including a look at critical voices with regard to the Fair Trade label).
A handbook on Fair Trade has been produced during the three years of the project. It can be used by other schools in teaching activities and is intended to encourage others to start work on this field possibly making use of our experiences made during the project.
At the end of the project, we can proudly say that we have successfully raised the awareness and also reached a better establishment of Fair Trade in all three partner organisations that is very likely to be continued, evaluated and improved by each of the partner schools in the following years in order to reach the highest possible sustainability of our project achievements.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126450 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lerbackskolan & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Radevormwald
• OSG De Ring van Putten