21 Day Pacific Challenge sending Christchurch to Niue

Transcript

A group of Canterbury University students head Niue later this month to implement schemes that won them the 21 Day Pacific Challenge.

To win teams of five had to develop a business plan in 21 days that could help Niue conserve, protect and sustainably manage its food supply.

The winning team came up with several schemes that they will help set up on the island over the course of a week.

Associate professor of Marketing, Dr Sussie Morrish, told Don Wiseman what they are trying to achieve.

SUSSIE MORRISH: The aim of the 21 day challenge, it was an international challenge last year and the destination was the Philippines.

It's really about our students learning how to solve real world problems, and in relation to the graduate profile that the University of Canterbury has.

So this is a non-curricular activity, a competition where the students apply to join the challenge and then we put together six teams, last year we put together six teams from the different colleges, so we have five faculties and we put them together, from the different disciplines to solve a problem.

And the winning team, after having gone through a preliminary and a final judging, goes to the country of destination and implements the project.

DON WISEMAN: What was the challenge that was issued for them?

SM: That was in Niue, we identified a problem and that was what they put a plan together, and that was with an overall budget of $10,000, how might the teams assess the Niuean community to conserve, protect, and sustainably manage their food supply, with a view to becoming self-sufficient.

Because as we know Niue is an island nation, and it's a coral atoll and food supply is quite a problem over there.

DW: So, the winning tea, EduKai, they decided to do what?

SM: Well what they have is a three pronged approach, to kind of sustainably, and preserve food tradition in new ways. So they've come up with a local contact there called Nadir, who wanted to preserve traditional ways of cooking and passing that on before the elders pass away and their skills and knowledge are forgotten.

So using that as an original idea, to collate all these recipes and put them into a book, they also will be working with the family cooks and a community kitchen called Taumafa, to teach the youngsters and the village the traditional ways of cooking because one of their team members is doing a PhD on diabetes and they found statistically there is quite a big problem with diabetes and obesity in Niue.

So by helping the community to adapt their traditional ways of cooking and consuming food, and growing them, and a third approach to this is connecting with the local organic farmers and a local community, then they will have buy in from a specific community, I can't quite remember which community it was.

So that was the winning team

DW: So they go to Niue, how long do they spend there?

SM: Just over a week, we go on the 29th of June and they come back on the 9th.