Contact Andy Ashcroft at andy@koolskools4u.co.uk
In recent years Fairtrade-friendly schools and universities have been kindly asking Koolskools, the Fairtrade Foundation’s Education
Campaigns Team and Scottish Fair Trade whether there is a way for their Fairtrade-ECO groups to connect with Fairtrade grower communities in a meaningful way…
…well, we are delighted to announce that, with a lot of help and encouragement from our Fairtrade friends, we think we have come up with the answer!
Koolskools have just launched a unique project designed to link charity fund raising support from Fairtrade-friendly UK schools and universities to the primary and secondary education sectors in the Fairtrade-organic cotton growing communities of Telangana, India.
Koolskools runs Fairtrade/sustainable business education partnerships with all their UK client and potential client schools and universities. A strong Fairtrade partnership with a local Southampton schools federation, Mount Pleasant, has sparked into life the long-standing Koolskools-SUstainable aim of connecting UK Fairtrade-friendly schools with schools in the marginalized farming communities from which we source our Fairtrade-organic cotton.
The Koolskools Fairtrade-certified supply chain starts with cotton produced by the organic cotton farmers working under the umbrella of Chetna Organic, a “Not For Profit” umbrella organization supporting over 20,000 organic cotton farmers across 3 Indian States.
The cotton is manufactured into Fairtrade-organic cotton garments in an ethical supply chain spearheaded by the principal Koolskools-SUstainable facory, Dibella India.
Koolskools has been visiting the Chetna Organic cotton growing communities, both in Telangana and Odisha, for over 10 years, and during those visits we have visited many drastically under-resourced village Primary schools.
The common thread running through the Chetna Organic village Primary schools (and indeed in Indian countryside conventional farming village Primary schools nationwide) is deteriorating school buildings and an almost total lack of basic furniture – desks and chairs. This leads to chronic back and posture problems for the young children, who have no choice but to spend hours sitting on bare floors if they want to go to school and get through primary education.
Absenteeism due to the lack of school furniture is, not surprisingly, relatively high. Students simply do not like going to school faced with the prospect of trying to learn whilst in on-going physical discomfort.
In the coming months and years, this ambitious project aims to target those primary schools in most need, starting with two pilot project schools in the cotton growing region of Telangana in desperate need of help – Mussalpahad (see the first Chetna Pilot school report here) and Goti Tribal Welfare Primary schools.
The project formally gets underway in March 2025, with initial fund-raising under the project being targeted at the start of the India school year in June 2025. Koolskools will be a conduit to Chetna Organic for all the funds raised.
Andy Ashcroft at Koolskools would be delighted to hear from Fairtrade-friendly schools and Universities interested in supporting the project at: andy@koolskools4u.co.uk.
Background
The Chetna Organic Fairtrade-organic cotton is turned into Koolskools-SUstainable garments via a Fairtrade-certified chain of factories spearheaded by Dibella India. Dibella are dedicated to the manufacture of totally traceable, fairly traded organic cotton using low impact production, recycled packaging materials, recycled garment labelling and so on.
Through interactive UK school and university Fairtrade Assemblies, lectures and class sessions, Koolskools have shared their inspiring ethical supply chain story with literally hundreds of thousands of UK students over the past 15 years. Their long-standing education mission has always been to open UK students’ eyes to the positive social and environmental impact that responsible, Fairtrade/ECO-certified business can bring to small-scale grower communities.
Koolskools shared their latest India visit material with the “Mount Pleasant Federation” of schools on their doorstep in Southampton, which has a multi-ethnic student profile, including many children of Indian origin. They were excited to hear about Chetna’s work with the cotton growing communities, to the extent that they are going to turn the material into a more formal, structured global learning experience for their students.
The Mount Pleasant schools also decided they wanted to channel some of their annual charity fund-raising activities towards helping primary education in the Telangana Chetna cotton growing communities, and the first tranche of those funds is ready to be channeled to Chetna who will be working with the first two pilot primary schools under the project – Mussalpahad and Goti Tribal Welfare Primary schools in Telangana.