This past weekend, the Okanagan College (OC) Enactus team traveled to Toronto to compete in the Enactus Canada National Exposition final round.
Enactus is an international social entrepreneurship project competition for university students around the world. It is organized by Enactus, which is a non-profit organization with headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.
Currently, there are 33 countries participating in the competition, with 1,730 college and university teams and over 500,000 students.
OC came into the Toronto event competing against 60 other teams from around the country. Their project is a home-grown initiative called the Unusually Good Food Company.
The team ended up winning the competition, propelling them to the international event later this month.
Inspired by a local student who noticed that large amounts of apples are wasted every year because they do not fit the grocery stores appearance standards, the OC team worked alongside the North Okanagan Valley Gleaners to turn those apples into healthy apple chips.
The chips were then distributed to local schools, food banks and even Ukraine and Guatemala. This year, 22,000 students have been positively impacted by the healthy and nutritious chips. The team also produced apple juice, which enabled them to become a sustainable social enterprise and also pay farmers for apples that would have gone to waste.
The team then pivoted to include cherries and began producing cherry juice, while also utilizing the apple pomace by-product to create apple based candles.
The school's victory at nationals will now send the six-person team to the Enactus World Cup in Puerto Rico to represent Canada on October 30- November 2.
“It has been an honour to work with such an incredible team on this journey,” said MacKenna Lenarcic, who is the President of Enactus Okanagan College and one of the five presenters.
“The Enactus OC team has put countless amounts of hours in to create the fully sustainable social enterprise we presented on that’s taken something ‘unusual,’ and turning it into something beneficially beautiful. The impact we have on our community, nationally and internationally continues to inspire me and I am excited to have the chance to showcase this to the world on Enactus Team Canada.”
Congratulations to the team of Lenarcic, Rebekah Dingwall, Mandi Kohut, Jackson Price, Danielle Walker and Andrew Loken!
To learn more about the team and the Unusually Good Food Company, please click here.
