Monday 23 September 2013

Vinnies Work Towards a Fairer Deal as part of Social Justice Week

   During Term 3, the St. Joseph Vinnies have spent time focusing on the theme of Social Justice Week – Meaningful Work for the Young Worker. The term kicked off by looking at the skills and talents that the Vinnies have and how they can use these skills and talents to assist other people. The unit of work then took into account the Bill of Rights for Children leading into discussion of what we felt should be the rights of all workers. In learning about the work of Fair Trade we discovered that children’s rights let alone the rights of workers are not given the same consideration in other countries as what they are here. As two of the Vinnies wrote, “In 2005, the International Labour Organisation claimed that there were over150,000 children working in horrible conditions in the Ivory Coast of Africa. This is one of the things that the Fair Trade Company hopes to stop and we fully support it in any way we can.”
   One way that the St. Joseph Vinnies found of supporting the work of Fair Trade is by using Fair Trade Cocoa Powder and Cane Sugar to make chocolate biscuits. The chocolate biscuits that we created were able to be presented to Mary Sullivan from Loaves and Fishes along with homemade soap that the St. Joseph Vinnies had also made this term. Mary will distribute the soap and chocolate biscuits to the Thursday Community that comprises of struggling families that Loaves and Fishes supports. The St. Joseph Vinnies also entered their baking into the Fair Trade Big Fair Bake Competition in the hope that should we win the Fair Trade ingredients and kitchen equipment up for grabs this can be donated to Loaves and Fishes as well.

   As part of the St. Joseph Vinnies Social Justice Week Focus, John Marshall from Fair Trade was able to share with us further information about the work of Fair Trade and a Social Justice Week display of the Vinnies work was put up on display at school. 

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