jGYM - Can you beat the system?

A few weeks ago we had a fantastic session with our younger Friday night group jGYM (school years 6-9). In preparation for the "Tour de Fred" dinner & quiz the next week which was in aid of Cafod's Hungry for Change campaign we played a game that focused on understanding the global food system and the impact it has on small scale farmers. The game was recommended by Cafod but it can be found on the Oxfam website. It's called "Beat the System" and it was great fun.

We split up our group into teams of 5; 3 where were small scale farmers, 1 were traders and 1 was a company. They were based in a fictitious country called Centralia and throughout the game there were updates from Centralia news. The aim of the game was to grow and harvest corn and coffee cherry's and then sell them and make money. The team with the most money at the end won the game. To make it realistic the company where given the most resources (crops, colouring pencils/pens, scissors and international trading license) and the farmers had minimal resources. There were 4 seasons throughout the game, including a drought and company investment which affected the teams quite drastically depending on their situations. You can find the guide here.


It took a little while to set up but it was well worth it as the young people got really into it and very competitive, but the main thing is that they learnt a huge amount about how unfair it is for small scale farmers in this world. A highly recommended session!

After the game Martin Brown from Cafod A&B came along and linked the game to Cafod's Hungry for Change campaign and then stayed for GYM (school years 10-13) to fire them up for the Fred's visit next week as part of the Tour de Fred.