Orange Trading Game

Yesterday, we had another attempt at playing the Orange Trading Game.

This time two families decided to work together to help their production of oranges, but it was still tough going as they had to pay two lots of cost-of-living expenses and had to borrow from the money lender to make ends meet.

The money lender, Morakod, was very busy negotiating interest rates and working out how much people had to pay back. The money lender had to work closely with the Cost-of-Living collector, Rithy, who had a difficult time getting people to pay their bills and had to report this to the money lender.

Our market traders had a difficult time, because when the families were feeling the stress of paying bills, the traders found that the families really began haggling with them over the price of the oranges. They began to feel pity for them worried over whether to accept oranges that were not perfect or give them a better price.

The groups ended up owing money to either the money lender or the cost-of-living collector which led to an interesting conversation about what people can actually control in reality and how we really want to help the famers who grow products, such as fruit.

Next week, we will  continue investigating what FAIRTRADE is all about. If you have any experience with fairtrade could you please share this with your child and they can share it with the class.

Here are some photos for you to enjoy. The intensity of looks on some students faces shows you how hard they worked, how they negotiated and then the frustration they felt when things did not work out for their family.