Civic Engagement Workshop – Labour Rights

After more than 2 decades Oxfam’s school program has closed. Our commitment to tackling poverty and empowering communities continues. The resources on these pages will no longer be updated.

September 2019.

Agenda to host a two-hour Civic Engagement Workshop in your classroom:

1.  The first step is to set up AV equipment with What She Makes (works best in Chrome) and take a quick stroll through the ‘About’ and ‘Company Tracker’ page to get a basic understanding of the campaign (00:00 – 00:05). The company tracker pages allows students to follow up on brands.

2.  Together watch the five part NPR series following the travels of a simple t-shirt in the global economy to familiarise students on the basics of the garment manufacturing supply chain – planetmoney.com/shirt  (00:05 – 00:17).

3.  Separate students into groups of 13 (can be flexible) and hand out the character cards of the What She Makes game – roles can be assigned at random  all instructions are included in the print out and students will only need pens and two different coloured post-it notes (20 of one colour and 5 of another colour) for each group of 13. This activity is student led so that teachers can help support individual students while those in ‘council member’ roles will lead the game (00:17 –  01:17).

4. After the game students can take action to demand a living wage for the women who make our clothes, follow the guidelines for the letter writing activity and send letters to the CEO’s of big brands. Demand they pay a living wage to the women making the clothing for the Australian market (01:17 –  02:00).