MEET THE WINNERS FOR THE IMPACT AWARDS IN 2020.

Five inspiring young New Zealanders each took a share of the $25K in prizes for The Impact Awards across five major categories – climate, enterprise, global, inclusion, and wellbeing. This year we received a record number of entries, with a combined total of 400+ applications and nominations, and every region of New Zealand represented. Meet our winners, and learn more about their work below!

Jayden Klinac // Winner – The Impact Award for Climate.

As the entrepreneur and founder behind For The Better Good and Edible Earth, Jayden Klinac is driven by a mindset that sees problems as opportunities. Jayden has not only re-designed and produced New Zealand’s first biodegradable & compostable water bottle made from plants, but is also working to completely redesign the system to reduce carbon emissions, reduce waste, and sequester carbon.

This includes setting up a network of free water refill stations throughout the country; the first collection system for compostable water bottles; the first inner city compost hub, in Auckland, and with development underway to build out NZ’s first privately operated and decentralised composting network throughout Aotearoa. Jayden and the team are using profits to help set up and support local urban food systems, and have diverted 40,000kg of food waste and packaging from landfills in the past 12 months.

The $5,000 prize money will help to expand the community composting system, and employ a gardener to help lead a new local community chapter for this in Wellington. The intention is that with enough compost, they will start growing local food for that community, and run workshops on composting and growing food for locals who would like to learn.

Kendall Flutey // Winner – The Impact Award for Enterprise.

Accountant turned software developer and education entrepreneur, Kendall founded Banqer to help improve the financial literacy and capability for students in schools. The platform lets kids experience and manage personal finances hands on, and has now impacted the lives of over 150,000 Kiwi students, and a further 40,000 in Australia.

On average, Banqer sees a 10% improvement in the financial literacy levels of students that use the platform, which, if this level of improvement was seen across New Zealand as a whole, would add billions to the economy. Kendall says that despite the publicity they have received, building a viable and impactful enterprise model has been extremely difficult, and The Impact Award helps to provide important validation to keep going.

Kendall and the team at Banqer plan to use the $5,000 to help with expanding internationally, and hopefully helping to reach not just hundreds of thousands of students, but millions of students around the world.

Rez Gardi // Winner – The Global Impact Award.

Born in a refugee camp in Pakistan, Rez and her family escaped Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds in Iraq, and came to New Zealand as a refugee as a child. This challenging start became a powerful motivator as she then went on to become NZ’s first kurdish lawyer, and then onto to become the first Kurd in history to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Rez is now based in Iraq working as a lawyer on cases for the prosecution of ISIS for their targeted genocidal campaign against the Yezidis, including mass executions, kidnapping, torture, sexual violence, and other egregious human rights abuses. Outside of this work, Rez works on a range of impact-driven initiatives around the world.

She is a founding Member of the Global Youth Advisory Council to the United Nations Human Rights Council; has delivered presentations to more than 100,000 people globally through conferences, events, and other speaking engagements; has delivered more than 1,000 workshops for refugee youth; and is the founder of Empower, a youth-led-organisation that works to support refugee youth through education, leadership, and capacity-building, so that young refugees can pursue a meaningful future.

Rez’s vision for the future is to see that all refugee youth have access to quality education. Rez and the team at Empower plan to use the $5,000 for project funding to support the delivery of workshops for refugee youth, many of whose studies have been severely impacted by COVID-19.

Shaneel Lal // Winner – The Impact Award for Inclusion.

A driving force behind the Conversion Therapy Action Group, Shaneel is a survivor of conversion therapy in Fiji, who’s advocacy has received support from various psychological associations, alongside political parties’ policies.

On the face of it, New Zealand seems supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community encouraging people to live as their true selves. After decades of relatively progressive and anti-discriminatory legislation the queer community in New Zealand seems well protected, but there are serious loopholes in New Zealand’s justice system. One of these loopholes has enabled the physical and psychological torture of many in the queer community, with a practice that is still legal in New Zealand – Conversion Therapy.

Conversion therapy is based on the misguided idea that people are wrong or broken because of their sexual orientation or gender identity and aims to compel an individual to renounce their sexual orientation or gender identity via a range of manipulative and abusive practices. New Zealand continues to have the highest youth suicide rates in OECD countries and queer youth are disproportionately represented in these rates – the effects of Conversion Therapy further feeding into these tragic statistics.

After 3 long years of volunteer led action and cross government lobbying, a critical shift is on the horizon – a blanket ban on Conversion Therapy. The new Government has made a public promise to ban conversion therapy, so now is a critical time to show support, campaign and shed light on the fact that this practice still exists in Aotearoa.

Shaneel and the Conversion Therapy Action Group is looking to use the $5,000 funding to help increase public awareness and increase their advocacy efforts, including providing training to help upskill allies in advocacy, to help fund a documentary that will tell the stories of survivors of conversion therapy. It will raise awareness of the reality of the LGBTQIA+ community in NZ.

Sarah Tuck // Winner – The Impact Award for Wellbeing.

Sarah is the co-founder of CoLiberate, a social enterprise that is working to tackle New Zealand’s mental health crisis.

Their solution is built around a bold vision – that every New Zealander has a trusted someone who can notice when they are not doing okay, and has the skills to help them connect with the right support. Sarah and the team were one of the first organisations in New Zealand to be accredited to deliver the Mental Health First Aid Training Certificate, and they now deliver a wide range of training to offer early intervention support, de-escalate distress in the moment it happens, and connect people to the appropriate professional support.

Sarah and the team at CoLiberate have trained more than 1,000+ people in Mental Health First Aid & Response. These people are now equipped and making a huge difference in their workplaces, social circles and communities. On average, trainees are having 3.4 supportive conversations per week. That’s estimated to be 300,000 supportive conversations that are improving people's lives every single year.

Sarah and the team are working to launch their first Wellbeing Gym in central Wellington in early 2021. Sarah plans to use the $5,000 to take their Mental Health First Aid training on the road around Aotearoa, increasing access for Kiwis outside of the main centres – first stop, Southland!