Students across the South East are being ecouraged to ‘Give Peas A Chance’.
Cully of the Cully & Sully food business returned to his old secondary school in Waterford this morning accompanied by GIY to launch the competition.
The initiative aims to foster a spirit of food entrepreneurship in Irish secondary schools and discover the country's next young food entrepreneurs.
The ‘Give Peas A Chance’ competition, combines food growing and entrepreneurship to inspire students to grow their own peas.
Students then need to devise a soup recipe using what they have grown to come up with a product, which Cully & Sully will produce.
Growing kits, which include everything the students need to grow peas, will be delivered to 7,500 students across the country.
According to Michael Kelly founder of GIY, "This initiative enables students to learn first hand about food enterprise right from the seed onwards. We know that to make good food you need great ingredients and you can’t get better than growing your own. We feel that this initiative will help to accelerate even more brilliant food starts ups in our local food system in the future. We’re excited to offer a real opportunity to young students across the country to gain hands on experience in all segments of the food business from growing, to recipe development to ingredient and nutritional listings and pitching their very own product; it’s going to be a great learning experience."
Cullen Allen of Cully & Sully said, " We are really hoping to inspire a new generation of food entrepreneurs. Learning at our mother’s kitchen tables gave us our passion for good food and we’re grateful for that every day. We hope to see that passion grow in these junior entrepreneurs. Pea soup may seem simple but with the creativity and ingenuity that we know Ireland’s young people have we can’t wait to see what they come up with."
Students will be allocated a series of ‘Give Peas A Chance’ challenges and in the final phase they will be asked to file the details of their own ‘ReciPEA For Success’ using their home-grown peas as inspirations for a brand-new soup recipe.
The ‘reciPEAS’ makers who make the shortlist and will be invited to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style pitch scenario at the home of GIY, GROWHQ in Waterford on May 25th, 2017.
A winning team of two will be selected and crowned 'Give Peas A Chance Champions'.
The winning students will be awarded a prize pot of €5,000 which includes a €3,000 food garden for their school, 2 iPads for the winning team of two students and the brand new winning soup recipe will be produced by Cully & Sully and served at the GIY Café ‘GROW HQ’.
Schools and teachers planning to participate in this nationwide competition can now sign up to take part from today February 28th 2017 via http://www.cullyandsully.com/ourgarden
