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Description

A simplified version of Christian Aid's fair trade game, to see if the kids can work out how much of the money they pay for chocolate goes to each person in the chain of production...

Resources

lots of plastic coins - 20 per child. Signs which say on them: Cacao Bean Farmer, Buyer, Importer, Chocolate Company, Shops and Government, perhaps with pictures to help. A pie chart showing how much money actually goes to each of those groups.

Instructions

Each child is given 20 plastic coins each. Each coin represents 5p of £1 paid for a chocolate bar. They must decide how much of that money goes to each of the categories by putting their money into piles next to the signs. When they have done it, the coins are looked at (counted if possible) and the proportion of the total worked out. Discuss with the children what they thought over all. Then show them the actual proportions of money paid to each using the Christian Aid information.

This is what happened without fair trade. The cacao farmers get very little of the money but they take all the risk. The plants are very sensitive and can be affected by changes in the weather etc. which means that one year the farmer might have no beans to sell, so he has no money. But he doesn't get enough to be able to save money from the good years either... The big companies buying from them drive down the prices...

Such hardship encourages crime, such as taking children into slavery to work on the farms.

Fair trade means that the farmers get a fair price for their chocolate, resulting in less hardship, and less crime. Look for the fair trade logo. Discuss what other products you might find that are fair trade.

Tags

• challenge
• chocolate
• fair trade
• game

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