Fair Trade Scouts

Last night I and two fellow members of the Fairtrade Association Birmingham (FAB) visited Sutton Coldfield Cub Scouts to talk to them about Fair Trade.We were pleasantly surprised by the level of awareness about Fairtrade. All of the Cubs recognised the FT logo, although they were not all able to confirm it’s meaning. Following a noisy discussion around the banana game, which involves assuming the position of a person or group in the banana supply chain, we talked about the life of Ashuwera, a female farmer in Ghana. The scouts had some good ideas around the hardships that Ashuwera faced, and seemed to grasp that agreeing a fair price for Ashuwera’s cacao beans was a very good idea. We didn’t stay until the end of the meeting, when the scouts were to be given Fair Trade chocolate bars (our ear-drums couldn’t take it), so we didn’t determine whether the scouts were as enthusiastic about the taste of the chocolate as they seemed to be about the topic. Hopefully they were!