During July, students from Imberhorne visited four local primary schools to run workshops teaching nearly 300 students all about Fairtrade. A total of eleven workshops were given to year 3, 4, 5 and 6 students. This is the third year Imberhorne have conducted these special outreach sessions and as in previous years, the workshops centred on playing ‘unfair’ games with the pupils. Year 4's played the ‘water game’ – where the class was split in two and each team had to carry water from one bucket to an empty bucket several metres away. Although, one team had cups with holes in and had to hop! Naturally this led to shouts of “that’s unfair” – which needless to say was the point!

The aim of all workshops was to have the pupils understand what it means to be a farmer in the Developing World who is not supported by Fairtrade. This was reflected in the ‘orange game’ that was played with year 6's. This was a simulation game where groups of about four or five pretended to be orange farmers trying to make a living. They had to draw and cut-out oranges on pieces of paper and sell them to a ruthless market trader. To complicate matters, a cost-of-living collector went around the teams to collect taxes and bills – and many additional costs that were randomly applied! The groups had to deal with freak natural disasters, rampant inflation, crashes in the world price of oranges, dodgy loan sharks and the additional costs of medicine and schools! As such, no team finished with a profit – one team ended up in over £6000 of debt in just over an hour!

All the games showed the students the tough lives that far too many people have to live. It was the job of the Imberhorne representatives was to show the students the difference that Fairtrade can make to these people’s lives and the way that it does this. Finally, it was important to underline what the pupils can do themselves to support Fairtrade and spread the message. There were positive messages of thanks from all the classes and schools that were visited; Lingfield Primary School said: “your planning and passion came across clearly… it is a fantastic experience for the children to learn from young adults who are such positive role models and show such an interest in the world around them”.