12 Dec 2018

KGV has now been accredited with Fairtrade school!

The KGV Fair Trade Club is a dedicated group of students who have strived to increase the awareness of Fair Trade and its objectives through collaboration with HK Fair Trade to help members of the KGV community to make better consumer choices. Fair Trade itself is a charity that helps the conditions of producers in developing countries by ensuring that they receive a fair price for their products and improving their quality of life overall.

Over the past few years, we have held several events around the school to educate students about the benefits of Fair Trade, ranging from design competitions and baking competitions to Easter egg hunts and food stalls. This year, we have been awarded the Jockey Club Fair Trade School Award due to our continued work over the past two years, which will finally establish KGV as a Fair Trade School. We are now working towards increasing the presence of Fair Trade in day-to-day school life and informing more students about it, as well as more events throughout the school year that will create fun and engaging experiences.

During the Fair Trade Award Ceremony we attended, we started off with a workshop where we made quinoa energy balls which were made of Fair Trade products like cocoa powder, roasted quinoa and honey. It should have been quite simple but, unfortunately, it seems like we’re not the best at cooking! I would say that we probably ended up with the most mishaped balls.

For the next hour, we listened to a presentation about the importance and purpose of fair trade, especially when considering the sale of Quinoa. Unfortunately, much of it was in Cantonese, but it was still quite fascinating and the visuals really helped! We also watched an inspiring and educational video about a recent trip to Sri Lanka, where some of the students from another school were given the opportunity to first-hand experience the life of workers involved in the Fair Trade scheme. Afterwards, we got to the award ceremony where we were able to see all the other schools come up to get their award and were later called up to the stage. We were the only international school up there!

I found it emotional as we shook hands and took pictures. Finally, we ate the quinoa balls that we made earlier which were tasty, crunchy, and of course, very chocolatey. In short, it was a great end to the scheme that was undertaken two years ago by our predecessors but also marked the start to our new initiatives as we will now push to go on further and continue our efforts in raising awareness throughout our school community.  

Simran RUNGTA (Year 12)