Maia Couper, Stacey Jones and Reuben Woods from the Young Innovator Awards. Photo/supplied
Maia Couper, Stacey Jones and Reuben Woods from the Young Innovator Awards. Photo/supplied
If you're a high school student with a creative mind, you could hook yourself a whole lotta cash come August. But first you'll need to fold some paper to take flight these holidays.
The Young Innovator Awards is an annual problem-solving competition for secondary school students to encourage innovation, andthe YIA team is holding a paper plane make-athon at Bayfair next week.
Woods, The Creative Agency sponsors the awards and its creative director, Reuben Woods, says they're using darts as a way to teach kids about innovation through doing.
"There is a process to coming up with an idea, with an innovation, and you don't always crack that idea in the first go so it's about repeating and redoing the ideas," Reuben says. "Darts cuts through all age groups and anyone can engage with that and it's fun."
There is a competition element, where darts need to go through a hole - "It's about precision, not distance," Reuben says - then kids go in the draw to win Bayfair vouchers.
YIA project manager Stacey Jones says the team recognises that kids are busy with school work during term time, which is why they're offering a fun challenge in the holidays instead.
She says they're ensuring the awards programme is explicit about the process of innovation this year - that it's about creating solutions to real-world problems - so kids entering the awards can be more sure they're giving the judges what they want.
"We're just trying to find ways of helping them come up with a problem, then learn the process of how to make [their solution] better and better and better, which is innovation," she says.
* The Young Innovator Awards paper plane make-a-thon is on at Bayfair from 10am to 2pm, April 18 to 22. For more information about the awards, check out www.yia.co.nz
