2018 Challenge Winners

Operation Take Two

From a simple high school project to a burgeoning social and environmental movement, Operation Take Two sets an example of what passion and youth leadership can accomplish.

Operation Take Two is a youth-led social enterprise revolutionizing the global issue of waste by paring it down to a replicable, community response. They do this by packing everything needed to recycle plastic waste into a repurposed shipping container—allowing them to transform plastic waste into practical, one-of-a-kind items such as plant pots and reusable grocery bags.

Through the sale of these items, they generate a profit that not only ensures the project’s sustainability but allows them to expand the project to new cities and invest in other community youth-led initiatives. In this way, they equip young people with valuable social and entrepreneurial skills and create a self-sustaining community hub for youth-led creativity, education, and empowerment. Read more about this amazing team on their website.

Operation Take Two started as a way for one high school to take action on a single issue: plastic waste. Since then, it has grown into a non-profit collective mobilizing youth to co-create intersectional sustainability.

Using Precious Plastic’s model, our small team of high schoolers designed a community recycling workspace in a repurposed shipping container at Rutland Senior Secondary to take school waste and turn it into new items. With the Sustainable Development Challenge as our launchpad, we developed a project proposal and grew community connections. Winning the challenge in 2018 and receiving the $5,000 prize grew OTT from just an idea to a project we were actually doing.

Over the course of two years, we worked to develop connections with over 14 community organizations, including Rotary Clubs, Okanagan College, and the City of Kelowna. Through these connections, we were able to access over $50,000 in grants, donations, and in-kind contributions to make our project a reality.

We gained national attention in 2019 when we auditioned for the reality TV business pitch competition Dragons’ Den and were invited to film an episode in Toronto. Pitching our vision to help other communities start their own Take Two workspaces, we received a total $30,000 donation from two “dragons” and an additional $30,000 donation through the Desjardins GoodSpark program. This support brought Operation Take Two’s total in grants, donations, and in-kind contributions to over $100,000.

Upon graduating high school in 2019, our three co-founders passed on operations of the Rutland workspace to current students and set our sights on how we could set up OTT to make a greater impact.

We expanded our vision and OTT is now just one program within a larger organization—the Sankofa Sustainability Collective, a registered society. Sankofa strives to centre intersectionality within the environmental movement by acknowledging that the issue is much bigger than just plastic and recycling. Sustainability means a liveable world for all of us. We strive to centre communities pushed to the margins to foster sustainability. Through accessible action, knowledge sharing, and community bridging, we work to leave no one behind. 

We’re currently working on our plan to begin networking with other communities and distributing funds to help them start their own OTT workspaces. Learn more: www.sankofasustainability.org

2018 Finalists

Mission Roots Cafe

This group of philanthropic entrepreneurs continue to run their sustainable cafe. They recently won the IGEN competition and have a strong future ahead of them. They are educating the students and staff at OKM about local charitable giving and living a vegan lifestyle. See their Challenge entry here.