Student Worksheet

Ethical Investing - Activity Instructions

In this activity you’ll learn how businesses or ‘investments’ come to be determined as ‘ethical’ and build a case study of an ‘ethical’ Australian business.

Read through the Ethical Investment factsheet and watch the following clip:

Ethical Investing - Why it Works (https://youtu.be/52-kOJWNSGs)

In your own words, describe ethical investment:

Explain why you think ethical investment does or doesn't work:

Case Study

Step 1.

Visit the Australian Ethical ‘Companies we invest in’ web page. Choose a sector (e.g. education, food production, transport) that you are most interested in and then choose one company from that list to research.

Step 2.

Once you have chosen your company to research, visit their website to learn a little bit about them, then find three news articles linking the company to ethical practices or programs.

For example, if you chose ‘financial services’, you might find ‘Bendigo & Adelaide Bank Ltd’. You could go to the Bendigo Bank website and navigate to their ‘Community’ tab where you can see how much of their profits they contribute to community programs. Then, search for news articles, including the search terms ‘Bendigo Bank ethical’ and see what you find.

Step 3.

Write down what you noticed on the company’s website about their ethics (e.g. did they advertise any programs relating to ethical activities?).

Step 4.

Now find your three news articles about the company and fill in the table below:

Based on what you have learned about this company:

• Do you agree that they are ‘ethical’?

• Would you invest money in this business? Why/why not?

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Taking It Further

If you have some savings and are interested in investing some money in an ethical company or managed fund (you usually need $500 or more), speak with your parents or caregivers to get some guidance. If they don’t know much about investing, you could speak with a teacher or trusted adult with investing experience. Try to avoid taking all of your advice from just one person, and especially not from a bank or institution’s representative, who’s main interest will be selling you their product.

Ethical Investing

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Summary

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