A handful of Okanagan College business students are preparing to take on the rest of the country after bringing home three first-place titles at the Enactus Western Canada regionals.
The regional competition took place virtually last week, with teams from a multitude of post-secondary institutions pitching their student-created initiatives that seek a positive impact on communities.
The Okanagan College team – FruitSnaps, their social-enterprise initiative – won two challenges and took home $3,000 for their initiative. Specifically, they won the event’s climate-action challenge and the entrepreneurship challenge.
According to the college, FruitSnaps was launched in 2018 and has since transformed into a social enterprise. It supplies nutritional snacks to schools, foodbanks and Indigenous communities, as well as international destinations such as North Korea, Ukraine, Guatemala and Armenia.
“Our team is thrilled to receive these awards for the FruitSnaps program,” said Okanagan College business student Danielle Walker.
“The prize money allows us to continue to fight climate change and food insecurity and there is no better feeling than knowing all of this hard work is providing children across B.C. with access to nutritious food.”
After being launched in 2018, FruitSnaps has donated over 34,000 servings of shelf-stable snacks this season so far.
It helps divert food waste into sellable snacks. This year alone, the company had turned over 18,000 pounds of food waste, saved four million litres of water, and prevented 36 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
With the help of gleaners in Vernon, students and volunteers pick unsellable apples from local orchards and convert them into dried apple chips.
“FruitSnaps isn’t just a school project for the classroom — this initiative has life-altering implications for this generation and the next,” said Okanagan College business dean William Gillett.
“Our students and faculty members and all the volunteers who have helped this project to fruition over the past three years deserve all of the accolades. I am so pleased this project will be recognized on the Enactus nationals stage and I look forward to seeing how it continues to expand.”
Okanagan College has already secured at least one national victory, which was awarded at the regional competition for a new challenge category, the Project Pitch Challenge.
The challenge involves students creating an innovative project that will help entrepreneurs who have been negatively impacted by the pandemic.
Five students OC Enactive students won first after pitching their idea against six of the top teams in the country, bringing home $1,500 in earnings for their idea.
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