AN app developed by students at West Craven High School and aimed at redistributing unwanted food to the most needy was unanimously named the winner in this year’s Digital Advantage competition.

Supported by the Lancashire Skills and Employment Hub, the initiative brings together a range of industry experts with schools and colleges to deliver digital industry skills and experience to the classroom.

The West Craven students worked over five days to generate a business idea, present it, perform market research and secondary research before creating a website and social media presence to market their product.

Their ‘Foodaway’ initiative aims to encourage people to give away unused food rather than throwing it away, and saw the students working with volunteers at West Craven Food Bank to produce a video promoting their idea.

The food sharing app helps to reduce food wastage by giving unwanted food to members of the public, helping to save hundreds of thousands of tonnes of good food that is wasted by the UK every year.

The students were supported by mentors Rav Gehlon and Paul Holloway to develop their idea and were delighted to beat teams from schools and colleges across Lancashire to the £2000 prize which will help them to continue development and promotion of the ‘Foodaway’ App and support their business plan.

In addition to winning the team competition, Claudia van Essen received an Excellence Award for her role in producing and maintaining the website for the project.

Alison Adams, careers lead at the Barnoldswick school, said: “We are so proud of our digital advantage team for not only winning the competition, but also for coming up with such a fantastic business idea which will really make a difference in our local community”.

“They have been so passionate about this project and that was evident in all of the materials they worked on and their final presentation. A huge thank you to the mentors for supporting our students and a huge well done to our fantastic team of students.”