Introduction
Young people need to reflect on the future of the world and what is the meaning of ‘good life’ for them. They are the future consumers, producers and agents of change.
(Autio & Heinonen, 2004, quoted in Mouchrek, 2017: no page)
This article presents the outcomes of a workshop on ‘Galvanising Youth Engagement in Fair Trade’ at the Fair Trade International Symposium (FTIS) at the University of Leeds, in June 2023. The Symposium’s broad theme ‘Fair Trade Connections’ provided the opportunity to think about how Fair Trade issues intersect and connect to many of the environmental and social justice-related issues young people are interested in today, and explore some of the ways that youth are engaging in Fair Trade.
There is a broad consensus that young people are an important force for social change. Indeed, in recent years young people have become critical participants in conversations on social justice and sustainability issues, and their voices are increasingly heard and listened to. There was significant youth involvement in the recent Black Lives Matter protests, and in the Rhodes Must Fall movement (Cabe, 2023). In 2019, young people took part in one of the largest environmental protests ever seen, skipping school to take part in the School Strikes for Climate (Thew, 2019). Youth taking action for a more sustainable and just future is crucial and young people are seen as a valuable force to bring fresh perspectives to common problems (De Vreede et al., 2014).
Against this backdrop of recent youth action, the workshop at the FTIS sought to explore the topic of youth engagement in Fair Trade. Fair Trade campaigners have recognized the importance of giving leadership responsibilities to young people who can bring a particular skill set and generate new ideas and social connections to help expand the movement (Peattie & Samuel, 2018). Yet local Fair Trade groups often struggle to recruit and retain young people (Government of Scotland, 2020). The Fair Trade movement in the UK has had a community-based, local activist orientation that has tended to be dominated by older people (Peattie & Samuel, 2018). One of its key successes has been the proliferation of fairly traded products in shops, schools, businesses and places of worship, and the awarding of the Fair Trade Town status to hundreds of towns and villages across the UK (Peattie & Samuel, 2018). In terms of youth involvement, whilst youth associations were part of the Fair Trade movement from its origins in the 1950s (Harris, 2021), youth engagement with Fair Trade in the UK tends to drop off after primary school.
Fair Trade education began in primary schools in the UK in the 1990s and became an important part of children’s learning about global and development issues. Pupils learn about trade justice through Fair Trade games and activities in their schools, mainly involving fairly traded products such as chocolate and bananas. A key focus is on songs and stories to highlight the plight of poor farmers, and school teachers dressing up as Fair Trade bananas. 1 Whilst this approach has successfully tapped into children’s innate sense of fairness (Bourn, 2018), the primary school focus and necessarily simplistic message means that young people at secondary school level and beyond miss learning about the complexities of Fair Trade, and its connections with other issues. Campaigners further believe that they fail to effectively engage youth because of the perception that Fair Trade is ‘tired and dated’ and that current issues such as climate change have a more radical message that appeals to youth (Government of Scotland, 2020).
Yet, Fair Trade has important linkages to many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), including those around climate change, food security, worker rights and gender equity. ESD is increasingly seen as a vital part of youth education to meet the SDGs. Indeed, engagement with Fair Trade provides a route to educate young people that sustainability encompasses more than environmental issues and can help to highlight the interlinked nature of global sustainability challenges (Schröder, Wals & Van Koppen, 2020). Furthermore, the ESD agenda goals of knowledge, competencies, values and readiness to act, can be fostered through experiential learning (Vogel et al., 2023). This kind of engagement with sustainability outside of formal educational settings is seen as essential to meet the ESD agenda in light of criticism that the school system is insufficiently preparing young people to deal with urgent sustainability challenges (Wals & Corcoran, 2012).
As this article shows, the youth engagement workshop demonstrated there are opportunities to engage youth through Fair Trade’s connections to broader sustainability issues, and to bring innovative approaches to Fair Trade learning that provide young people with a range of skills relevant to the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) agenda.
What Motivates and Empowers Youth to Engage?
The question of how young people become motivated to engage in social justice action is important to understand how youth engagement might be supported and sustained. Research on the recent climate protests shows that emotions and feelings of solidarity and collective aims were important motivating factors for young people to engage (Kowasch, Cruz, Reis, Gericke & Kicker, 2021). Studies of youth engagement in civic action show the importance of youth forming a personal connection to the cause for sustaining interest, as well as peer and adult relationships being a motivating factor (Akiva, Carey, Cross, Delale-O’Connor & Brown, 2015). Peer learning is seen to have particular importance for young people given the potential for positive peer influence over behaviours and actions (De Vreede, Warner & Pitter, 2014; Robichaud & Yu, 2022). Participating in group activities with like-minded peers can provide opportunities for collective accomplishments that can build both personal and group competencies to achieve sustainability goals (Chawla & Cushing, 2007; Vogel et al., 2023).
In addition to positive peer relations, Akiva et al. (2015) found that the spaces in which young people engage should be ‘protected and affirming’, so they provide a space of sanctuary and acceptance of youth identities. The ability of young people to play a role in co-producing those spaces is important and is more likely to lead to authentic engagement, rather than when interest in an issue is externally imposed (Kowasch et al., 2021). However, adult guidance is necessary for preparing young people to take action and ensuring that young people have opportunities to participate meaningfully in decision-making (Riemer, Lynes & Hickman, 2014). As Evans and Prilleltensky (2005) further point out, youth need to know how to participate, and in practice there are considerable barriers to authentic youth inclusion and participation (Riemer et al., 2014). Young people must be placed in the empowering role of participants and valued members of initiatives (Evans and Prilleltensky, 2005), rather than ‘beneficiaries’ of programmes. As such, youth engagement initiatives need to balance providing enough support to facilitate youth empowerment with giving young people room to shape their own experiences (Riemer et al., 2014; Umholtz, 2013).
Facilitating youth to develop a deeper understanding of societal problems is also key to their effective participation and ability to take action. ESD is about challenging the status quo and enabling the democratic participation of all if transformative change is going to take place (Kioupi & Voulvoulis, 2022). In practice, there is often a gap between knowledge of issues and action; what Mouchrek (2017) identifies as a value action gap. This is where ESD and sustainability pedagogies play an important role in going beyond knowledge and towards developing skills and competencies that can empower young people (Vogel et al., 2023). Participatory and experiential learning through which young people engage with the world around them have considerable potential to deepen understanding and mobilize youth to take action on social justice issues now and into adulthood (Evans & Prilleltensky, 2005; Vogel et al., 2023).
The Workshop
This section of the article provides a summary of the session at FTIS by the authors based on the workshop presentations and slide sets. The format of the workshop was three presentations on youth engagement activities and events relating to climate justice, ethical enterprise, and Fair Trade. The presentations were followed by table discussions to draw out key messages from the presentations and identify lessons learned.
The first presentation was about the Climate Justice Debate – a one-day event organized by Middlesex University, bringing together groups of four students from the universities of Bradford, Bournemouth, Kingston, City, University of London and Middlesex to participate. The aim of the event was to engage students with Fairtrade, ethical trade and holistic climate action, educate students about the relevance of Fair Trade and its intersectionality with other humanitarian and/or environmental issues, and provide students with transferable skills.
The morning session of the event had an educational element, with talks and a Q&A session with experts in Fair Trade and food security. Participants learned about the Fairtrade system, how it benefits farmers and workers, and some key themes in the food security debate. The students were guided on how to structure a formal debate, what to consider when writing a proposal, anticipating the other team’s objections and how to rebut likely counter assertions. Students were then divided into interdisciplinary teams of three students drawn from different universities, deliberately mixing groups to ensure the debate was not between universities. This approach encouraged students who did not know each other beforehand to quickly develop a way to work together as a team.
Teams were told whether they would be debating for or against the motion ‘Fairtrade is necessary for future global food security’ and given an hour to prepare their speeches using the internet and their own prior research and knowledge. They had access to the expert judges throughout this time and were able to ask questions and get advice about where to look for information. The debate format was effective as it encouraged students to research the topic for themselves with greater nuance and provided the opportunity to see diverse perspectives. Many university students had not been exposed to Fairtrade since primary school, and had given it little consideration since. Whilst the students learned from the experience, the organizers and expert judges, all of them Fairtrade supporters, also learned from the critiques of the student team speaking against the motion.
The second workshop presentation centred on a youth ethical trading initiative in West Yorkshire called ‘Not Just Us’, set up in 2011 by ethical trade charity The Lorna Young Foundation (LYF). 2 The project ran for two years from 2011 to 2013 with a focus on supporting young people to set up their own business selling fairly traded products with guidance from experts in ethical trade. Groups of young people from marginalized communities were brought together via different youth groups to learn about unfairness in global trade through talks, videos and visits to Fair Trade businesses. They learned about branding and marketing and came up with the branding for their own line of fairly traded products, including chocolate, coffee, tea and rice. They attended community events, Christmas fairs and local markets, and at these events they talked to members of the community about the Fair Trade message and what was special about their products.
Ongoing support for the youth groups was provided through mentoring from local professionals and in-kind support from local businesses, and this support became key to making both the scheme and the new Fair Trade businesses viable. This also gave the young people exposure and helped develop relationships between the young people and adult mentors. Through this experiential learning the young people made direct connections with farmers to gain an understanding of the issues they face; they developed skills such as networking, team building, business skills and learned to mix with new people from different backgrounds. In order to scale up and foster similar groups throughout the UK, LYF worked with the group to develop a set of learning materials and templates that young people could use to set up and manage their business in their local area, school, college, or community group.
In the final presentation, two University of Leeds students provided an overview of the University’s 2023 Fairtrade Fortnight campaign. One goal of the Fairtrade Fortnight campaign was to reach groups with little demonstrated knowledge or interest in Fair Trade. Campaigners posted on social media accounts with active followings to create an online presence throughout the fortnight. Through two ‘Instagram takeovers’ on the University of Leeds central Instagram account, @UniversityOfLeeds, campaigners provided knowledge about Fairtrade, checked student’s awareness of Fairtrade using question and answer boxes on the story slides, and promoted ways for students to get involved with Fairtrade on campus.
Three events aimed to embed the Fairtrade message within existing student groups and events to reach members of the student university population. The first was a ‘take over’ of the weekly pub quiz in the student union bar to try to expand the reach of the campaign. A round of the quiz was dedicated to Fair Trade, with questions taken from Fairtrade Foundation resources and read out by the quiz master, a LUU student. This approach had mixed success. Whilst prior to the quiz there was enthusiasm for the initiative, unfortunately in the first week the quiz master did not take it seriously, making fun of the questions and topic, presumably to build rapport with the audience. This further encouraged the audience to be disrespectful and insensitive to the issues being raised. The following week, different questions were provided that were more light-hearted and focused on Fairtrade products that students recognized.
The other events were more successful as they tapped into university societies with a broader interest in issues relevant to Fairtrade. The students organized the events themselves, linking the Fairtrade topic to the interests of the society’s membership. The Sustainability Society, which often has film nights, ran a screening of a ‘Big Fairtrade Get Together’ that focused on how Fairtrade can help cocoa farmers threatened by climate change. The Coffee Society has a connection to a local independent coffee shop whose owner has an interest in Fair Trade, and they hosted a talk on Fair Trade and a cupping event. This event provided a space for discussions about the connections between Fairtrade certification and the wider Fair Trade movement.
Lessons Learned
The presentations showcased different ways that young people are engaging in Fair Trade, and there are lessons that can inform future initiatives.
An educational element was key to the success of the events and projects, both in terms of providing the knowledge needed for effective participation (Evans & Prilleltensky, 2005) and also giving young people the space and tools to develop their own knowledge. For example, the Climate Justice Debate encouraged students to conduct their own research on the topics and develop their own arguments. The young people in the ethical trading initiative learned about business through training and practical application and eventually co-developed learning materials that were useful for other enterprise groups. Initial youth motivation was gained by tapping into an existing interest, not necessarily in Fair Trade, but in the related issue of climate change, or by offering young people an opportunity or new experience. Youth interest was sustained by enabling young people to own and shape their experience (Kowasch et al., 2021).
The opportunities for peer learning were maximized through these approaches, with opportunities for peers to be role models and for peer group exchanges which have been shown to develop competencies and positively influence youth behaviours for sustainability action (De Vreede et al., 2014). Through the climate debate event and ethical enterprise project young people experienced interactions not only with like-minded peers, but also with peers from different contexts and backgrounds. In the workshop discussion following the presentations, the importance of interdisciplinary or cross-cultural interaction was highlighted as a key way to develop communication skills and teamwork across disciplines and social or cultural barriers. This type of group working has the potential to develop confidence in young people’s abilities to achieve goals by working collectively, which is key for sustainability action (Chawla & Cushing, 2007; De Vreede et al., 2014).
Crucial to the success of the initiatives was the role of the mentor which enhanced experiential learning by exposing young people to adults in different walks of life who brought new ideas and approaches. Adult mentors – be they experts in the field, or professionals with experience – adopted a facilitating role whilst the initiatives remained youth-led and therefore youth-owned (Riemer et al., 2014). In the case of the climate debate, the training from the different volunteers enabled cross-disciplinary learning in an informal way, and the young people remained in control of the learning – the tool was available to them, and this was built into the experience. In the coffee cupping event, the knowledge of the café owner shaped the experience and brought new insights, whilst the young people remained the organizers of the event. In the case of the ethical trading initiative, the mentors were accessed through choice and the young people had a say in which expertise they required, therefore providing adult support in an ‘empowering way’ to contribute to the sense of youth ownership (De Vreede et al., 2014, p. 52).
Another lesson from the presentations is that the format of events and activities is important to sustain interest and engagement. The challenge of engaging young people without an existing interest in Fair Trade was demonstrated by the challenges arising at the Fairtrade quiz event. In this case, giving students the freedom and flexibility to present the event as they deemed appropriate did not work as the campaign organizers intended, but further highlighted the misperceptions some students have about Fair Trade. As the workshop presenters commented, the same level of disrespect probably would not have happened had the quiz been about a global issue such as climate change. It is important therefore to reflect on the students’ perceptions of Fair Trade and why this is not taken seriously as an issue of global justice. One issue is that the Fair Trade message is often seen narrowly in terms of Fairtrade products. Whilst the growth of Fairtrade products and recognition of the brand among youth has been a key success of the Fair Trade movement in the UK (Peattie & Samuel, 2018) the challenge now is to educate young people to see beyond the products and make the links between Fair Trade and justice, climate change and the SDGs more broadly. As mentioned in this article, most young people’s exposure to Fair Trade since primary school has been through products (Robichaud & Yu, 2021).
Harder to reach young people may need to be taken out of their comfort zones and engaged in ways that provide them with some additional benefits, as the ethical enterprise project showed. The workshop discussion raised this issue, and participants agreed that young people should gain something in terms of new skills, networking opportunities, the chance to win a prize to spark their interest and motivate them to engage. The ethical trading initiative offered marginalized young people who were not in education or employment the chance to learn about setting up their own business. Engaging young people who have an interest in justice-related issues is less of a challenge and combining the Fair Trade message with other topical issues worked well in the case of the climate debate. The Fairtrade Fortnight events linked to existing societies where students had a broad interest in issues relating to Fair Trade and enabled them to explore and discuss these links. One of the benefits of participation in the initiatives was the development of transferable skills including research skills, communication, teamwork, planning and networking. Engaging with the issue of Fair Trade further helped young people develop an understanding and appreciation of less dominant voices and narratives. Building competencies to work collaboratively and creatively to solve problems with empathy highlights synergies with the ESD agenda (Vogel et al., 2023).
Overall, the workshop presentations show that engagement with Fair Trade can provide experiential learning which develops young people’s awareness of complex local-to-global interconnections and a deeper understanding of the root causes of sustainability issues (Lehtonen, Salonen, Cantell & Riuttanen, 2018). There is an opportunity to develop sustainability skills and competencies in young people through initiatives beyond knowledge development (Evans & Prilleltensky, 2005). Not only are young people developing transferable skills, they are engaging with the principles of social justice, fairness and community participation that underpin the ESD agenda and provide the potential for transformative learning (UNESCO, 2017). The growing importance of young people learning to take action for sustainability also provides an opportunity for Fair Trade learning and action to be incorporated into these efforts, and demonstrate the relevance of the Fair Trade movement to a younger generation.