Activity 3: Campaigns

Aims

To examine the campaigns of a pressure group.

National Curriculum links

Pupils should be taught:

1(g) about the importance of a free press, and the media’s role in society, including the Internet, in providing information and affecting opinion; (h) about the rights and responsibilities of consumers, employers and employees; (j) about the wider issues and challenges of global interdependence and responsibility
2(b) to express, justify and defend orally and in writing a personal opinion about such issues, problems or events

Resources

• Activity Sheet 3.1
• Access to the Internet

Activity

• Describe the work of the Jubilee Debt Campaign (which has evolved from the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign).
• Pupils look at the two posters on Activity Sheet 3.1 and consider:
• What do they make you think?
• Why do you think there were complaints about the first poster?
• How effective are they as a means of alerting the public?
• You may wish to organise a debate about whether or not the first poster should be used.
• Pupils look at Activity Sheet 3.2 and consider the possible advantages and disadvantages of having a rock star as a spokesman.
• Using the Jubilee Debt Campaign site (www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk) and their own experience, pupils to find all the different ways of campaigning employed by such an organisation and create an idea of their own.
• Pupils might produce a flyer summarising the aims of the organisation.

Discussion points

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of fundraising to give aid to developing countries or lobbying world leaders to change the global situation?
• How can individuals ever hope to make a difference to the debt crisis?

Differentiation

Pupils might work individually, in pairs or groups, depending on ability.

Extension

• Pupils to design poster with slogan to put across a message about the debt crisis.
• Pupils to look at the World Bank position on the debt crisis at www.worldbank.org/hipc and prepare a statement for them to give to the anti-debt campaigners.
• Design and conduct a survey to establish people’s opinion about rock stars becoming involved in campaigns such as Jubilee Drop the Debt. People from different generations should be surveyed.