ST MARY’S School, Menston have had their Fairtrade Schools Award renewed after a great deal of hard work from both staff and pupils.

The school was awarded Fairtrade School status in December 2013 and to qualify for the renewal of the award, the school had to meet five goals; to establish a Fairtrade pupil group, to adopt a Fairtrade policy, to teach Fairtrade lessons, to sell Fairtrade products and to actively campaign to raise the awareness of Fairtrade.

The school planned a series of activities to help promote Fairtrade such as assemblies, pupil tuck shops, raffles and the staff now have a permanent Fairtrade tuck shop in the staff room.

Mrs Marie Hayes, Global Learning Coordinator and the staff member responsible for the application said: "I am extremely proud of the students who have put a lot of effort into our application and I would like to thank them for giving up their own time to do this. The school would not have achieved this status without their dedication and enthusiasm.

"Fairtrade is something we can all take part in and it only involves a slight change to our shopping habits. The Fairtrade mark is a guarantee that a product has been ethically produced and so the workers are fairly paid, and we felt that as a school we should continue to promote this as much as possible.”

The Fairtrade assessor said of St Mary's application: “It's really wonderful to see how well thought out the learning about Fairtrade is within your school. It seems well embedded across a range of subjects with the consequence that pupils have good awareness of Fairtrade issues. Your engagement with Fairtrade Fortnight looks very comprehensive - it's fantastic to see that the Global Warriors (part of the Fairtrade student group) were heavily involved and shared their knowledge of Fairtrade with the wider school. The raffles also sound like a good way of engaging people with Fairtrade, especially as it introduced Fairtrade footballs as a more unusual product! It all sounds like it was quite an undertaking and thank you for committing so much time and energy to raising awareness of Fairtrade!”

Fairtrade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalised producers and workers.