Croydon College students help secure Eco-citizen Award

[Holly Patton]

The work of several groups of students at Croydon College has been recognised in the Croydon Eco-citizen Awards 2009. The award, for “Best Environmental Message/ Campaign” was made to Croydon Fairtrade Network. Christopher Hunt, who received the award from Deputy Mayor, Russell Jackson in a ceremony at Croydon Clocktower on Wednesday 14 October, explained, “we ran a very ambitious campaign during Fairtrade Fortnight this year, and the hard work of students at Croydon College was a major contributing factor to its success.”

The highlight of the campaign was a visit to Croydon by two Ghanaian cocoa farmers. They are members of the Kuapa Kokoo co-operative who grow and sell cocoa on Fairtrade terms to Day Chocolate Company (makers of the Divine brand of chocolate), the Co-operative Society, and cocoa-butter to the Body Shop. The farmers had a very busy day, addressing local environmentally-minded business people at a “Business Breakfast” organised by “Envibe”, the Council’s Environment in Business group. The breakfast – using Fairtrade ingredients as far as possible – was prepared and served by students from the Hospitality and Catering courses at Croydon College. The farmers then spoke to all the vocational and A Level Business students.

The IT students used their skills in word processing and spreadsheets to produce invitation letters to all the churches and faith groups in Croydon, inviting them to the celebration of Fairtrade. As well as producing the letters, they organised the mail-out. “We worked closely with the Environment & Sustainability Team at Croydon Council. The council agreed to pay postage if we included some information about other environmental projects, e.g. home insulation discounts.”

The second major strand to the Fairtrade Fortnight campaign in 2009 was the banana eating challenge. Over 450 students ate a Fairtrade banana, distributed by another group of IT students who collected a small donation for each banana and raised £46 for promoting Fairtrade. Altogether, the Network recorded over 2,000 Croydon citizens who ate a banana during the 24 hours of the challenge. “Our next aim is to make Croydon College a Fairtrade College. Trinity School and a couple of primary schools are also working towards Fairtrade status, so there really is a bit of a challenge to see who will be the first Fairtrade school in Croydon – though, in the spirit of co-operation, we all seek to work together. It is the farmers who will benefit after all.”