ACTIVITY 8: A Dialogue with Your Lettuce

Overview: Participants trace their food through the local and global economy.

Time: 2+ hours.

Materials: Access to library and/or Internet.

Procedure:

1. Divide participants into small groups and ask each group to formulate questions they would ask about a head of lettuce in their refrigerator (e.g., Where were you grown? Who picked you? What were the working conditions?). The same "dialogue" could be held with shoes, shirts, etc.

2. Groups then exchange questions so that one group researches answers to the others' questions (e.g., industry profit, wages) using library and Internet resources.

3. Groups report their results to each other. Whole group discusses results in human rights terms.

Source: David Shiman, Amnesty International workshop on Best Practices for Human Rights Education, spring 1999.