Imberhorne School has won the Fairtrade Fortnight Award for Schools 2016, defending the title we won in 2015 and 2014! Imberhorne is the first ever secondary school to win the nationwide prize three times. The award celebrates the best activities conducted by a school during Fairtrade Fortnight (29th Feb – 13th Mar 2016). This year, entries were judged on four criteria: imagination, impact, educational content and relevance to the theme, which this year was “Big Fairtrade Breakfasts”.

For 2016 Imberhorne conducted assemblies to all year groups about Fairtrade and the supply chain. The students from the Fairtrade Group also sold Fairtrade chocolate and cookies around the school sites. During the fortnight, we visited local primary schools and a Beaver Scout group to host a Big Fairtrade Breakfast and run workshops about the positive effects of Fairtrade for farmers. The two weeks culminated in the Big Fairtrade Day at Imberhorne lower school, where Year 7s and 8s played and ran game stalls and Year 9s played an unfair dodgeball match against teachers. Overall, the  Fairtrade Fortnight raised £476.68 for the school’s ‘Lend with Care’ scheme.

Upon winning, the Fairtrade Foundation’s Education Campaigns Officer, Kathy Wise, said, “[Imberhorne] stood out for the fact that it involved the whole school and for the level of educational content in your resources… massive congratulations to everybody at Imberhorne! [Year on year] the entries get stronger and stronger but yours really stood out for taking all of the hard work that you have done in previous years and going even further with it.”

Henry Grub, the Year 13 student that has overseen the Fairtrade Group since 2013, added, “for us this really is the icing on Imberhorne’s Fairtrade cake. We work really hard every year to promote Fairtrade at Imberhorne and every year the students get behind us and are enthusiastic and produce a great atmosphere. To win three years running really is testament to the whole school: only all students together could achieve something like this.”