Capricorn Foundation Food Waste Challenge in phase 2

The Capricorn Foundation announced the successful conclusion of entries for phase two of its Food Waste Challenge (FWC).

This was confirmed in a statement released by the Capricorn Group yesterday.

According to the statement, the foundation called for innovative solutions that can expand self-sufficient social enterprises to address the issue of food waste in Namibia and create employment for Namibians.

“We are excited to announce that we have received 277 registrations for the challenge and that 152 submissions were formally entered. Thus, we had more entries this year compared to last year’s challenge. These submissions included individual, team, and business entity participants,” said Capricorn Group’s project coordinator Rikus Grobler.

The Capricorn Foundation said they are busy with the first round of evaluations, conducted by seven internal judges from the Capricorn Group to get to the top five entries or the semi-finalists, which will be announced next Wednesday, 7 June.

The entries received were mostly from Namibia and Botswana, of which many entries were from students and young adults with diverse ideas, some of which focused on technological solutions.

The participants used food waste as compost to grow and produce other value-adding products and animal feeds, collecting and distributing food, awareness of food waste and others focused on specific communities and areas.

“This year’s challenge was for a business proposal (social enterprise) and the submissions were much more detailed in nature compared to last year where only ideas were requested.

Once again, we are grateful and amazed by Namibians’ creativity in coming up with solutions to address the issue of food waste and their compassion for their fellow Namibians. We look forward to the announcement of the winning solution,” said Capricorn Foundation executive Marlize Horn.