It’s Fairtrade Fortnight until 9th March, and Year 7 volunteers at Malet Lambert have been working with Year 5 pupils at Gillshill School to raise awareness and knowledge of the Fairtrade industry, via an enterprise activity.
They were joined by Aimeth Fernández Angulo, who is a banana farmer and manager of a co-operative located in the Magdalena region of northern Colombia. Aimeth grows bananas on her small farm of 1.3 hectares which produces around 67 boxes (1.2 tonnes) of bananas a week.
Along with her translator, Aimeth spoke to students about how using Fairtrade products helps to support farmers and producers in developing countries.
Pupils were then given the task to create their own smoothie recipe, using a list of Fairtrade ingredients from countries around the world, and design a marketing and promotion campaign around it. The teams had lots of ideas of what they would like to include in their recipe and had even come up with dance routines to help them sell their products
Staff at Malet Lambert will choose a winner from the submitted smoothie recipe entries and the victorious team will be invited back to make their smoothie for real.
During the task, Aimeth stayed to see what the students were getting up to and she did her best to go and speak to every group while they were working, so they could ask her any questions they liked about her involvement in the Fairtrade banana industry.
The activity was organised in conjunction with Nigel Mills and Andrea Tharratt of Hull and East Yorkshire Community Foundation