At the start of Term 3, the BOP Team had the pleasure of travelling to Gladstone and launching Round 2 of the Gladstone Innovation Challenge in collaboration with Central Queensland University. Following a successful launch in 2021, we were thrilled to be given the opportunity to work with the same schools, different students and a new exciting topic: food!
The Gladstone Innovation Challenge sees students working in teams over the course of a term to develop new innovative solutions for their city. For the challenge this year, students were tasked with redesigning the food systems in Gladstone. This saw them creating a new and improved supermarket of the future, exploring sustainable solutions, developing new supply chain models to reduce CO2 emissions and designing a restaurant or cafe to support their local community.
The program kicked off with a day-long hackathon before shifting into after-school virtual sessions where students remained at school to learn about a new topic and work with their team.
As part of the challenge, students learned all about the emerging technologies and sciences that will contribute to the future of food. Topics such as vertical farming, just-walk-out-technology and 3D printed food are just a few of the examples that the students investigated. The challenge culminated with each team submitting a 5-minute pitch video detailing their future vision for the food systems in the city of Gladstone. Each video was then watched by a team of special guest judges, which included local council members and higher education professionals, who scored each video and resulted in a final top three.
In the final week of Term 3, the BOP Team hosted an awards evening back in Gladstone, where students, parents, and teachers came together to watch each of the submission videos and announce the overall winner of the challenge. The winning team received a trophy for their school and some small prizes for each team member.
We absolutely love delivering this program each year and are excited to announce that in 2023 we will be tackling the Future of Transport! To find out more about how we could run a similar program with young people in your local community, make sure to check out our Industry Program Opportunities and submit an enquiry to get in touch with our team!
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