Okanagan College’s Unusually Good Food project among best in the world

An Okanagan College project that started rescuing apples that didn’t make the grocery store grade in 2018 was one of the top four finishers at the Enactus World Cup in Puerto Rico.

The student-run business takes apples that would otherwise go to waste, dice, dehydrate and package them as Unusually Good Apple Bites. They’re been distributed to school children and marginalized people facing food insecurity as far away as Nunavut, Guatemala, North Korea, Ukraine and Armenia.

“I’m so incredibly proud of our team,” Mackenna Lenarcic, president of Enactus at Okanagan College, told iNFOnews.ca today, Nov. 2, from Puerto Rico. “I couldn’t have asked them to go out and do any more than they did. It was amazing.”

After going through a series of regional and national competitions, the team qualified for this week’s Enactus World Cup against 31 other teams.

“Going into these competitions, we were considered more of the underdogs, just because of our size,” a very excited Lenarcic said after making the final four. “Although Okanagan College spreads across four different campuses, we are small in numbers with only 2,000 students so, making it this far and being able to have a project that has achieved that much impact is huge.”

Enactus is a world-wide organization with chapters in universities and colleges that use “business as a catalyst for positive social and environmental impact,” its website says.

Lenarcic could not describe what the other projects were that made it into the final-four round because she was so focused on the Okanagan College presentation, which was the final one of the event.

They were up against teams from Tunisia, Egypt and the United Kingdom in the final round.

The winner was Egypt with Tunisia second. The third and fourth place order was not announced.

Twenty-one Okanagan College students and staff made the trip, including Karsten Ensz who was the hands-on project manager until he graduated last year. He had to sit in the audience and cheer.

“The most important thing to note with Enactus and with all these competitions is that we all win,” Lenarcic said. “At the end of the day, no matter who’s winning, every single team has made such a huge impact.”

READ MORE: Look out Sun-Rype, here comes Okanagan College’s Unusually Good Food Co.

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