STUDENTS tasted Fairtrade orange juice and bananas as part of a two-week awareness workshop.
Staff and youngsters at Edward Peake Middle School in Biggleswade were invited to compare Fairtrade orange juice with a supermarket brand as part of Fairtrade Fortnight.
At the end of the tasting the students were asked which juice they preferred and the majority favoured the Fairtrade option, mainly due to its stronger flavour.
Edward Peake teacher Martin Duffy and other members of the Fairtrade steering group also sold banana boats to students – Fairtrade bananas which were cut in half and covered with Fairtrade chocolate.
Chocolate also took centre stage at another sampling event, where children could taste-test a Fairtrade brand alongside a supermarket one.
Once again the Fairtrade version proved to be the more popular.
The second week of the fortnight started with a visit from Anton ‘Tookie’ Bowman, a banana farmer from the Windward Islands in the Caribbean. Tookie gave a short presentation to the school about his life as a banana farmer and what the Fairtrade movement is doing to support communities on the islands.
Mr Duffy said: “The children were fascinated by what Tookie had to say, asking many intelligent questions about his farm.
“They were also delighted to learn the correct way to eat a banana!”
Children could later buy a range of cupcakes, flapjacks, rock cakes and more made using Fairtrade ingredients.
To conclude the fortnight the school was split into groups with a mixture of students from Years 5, 6, 7 and 8 in each class.
Groups were assigned different products and were asked to give presentations on the background of each relating to Fairtrade and where the items are sourced and grown.