Transforming citrus fruits and strawberries into delicious treats!

Le problème
Citrus fruits in our area are left to fall from the trees without being utilized
The solution
Establishing a small business to make and sell citrus products
The prototype
Creating citrus products (e.g., marmalades, juices) and selling them at school
The societal actors
Millers, Supermarket, Fruits producers, Parents, Authorities, Environmental Org.

Hosted by SALL , contributed by cjkypria on 18 May 2022

A lot of citrus fruits in our area are either not utilized, fall off trees or are destroyed. This results to a lot of garbage in the area. So, we thought of establishing a small business to make and sell marmalades to raise money for the students in need in our school.

Teacher: cjkypria
Âge des étudiant.e.s
14-15
Social studies (history, geography, economics, citizenship, etc)
Thème du projet
GYMNASIO KOKKINOCHORION PANOU IOANNOU

We are located in the east side of Cyprus, the Famagusta region and near the ghost city of Famagusta. Our school is on a rural area, close to the touristic areas of Agia Napa, Sotira and Protaras. Our school consists of 385 students who come from six nearby villages.

Our students love and respect the school environment and they are very skillful and capable.

Also we have been awarded in many different areas such as Art, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, History, Greek and Biology. To add to that, our students have also competed in several sporting events.

Our project

A lot of citrus fruits in our area are either not utilized, fall off trees or are destroyed. This results to a lot of  garbage in the area. So, we thought of establishing a small business to make and sell marmalades to raise money for the students in need in our school.

Problem:

“How do we utilize the surpluses of the citrus fruits?” “How do we process the waste which is produced from the processing?” and “how do we trade our products?”

Solutions:

•Raw material transformation e.g. making marmalades, juices and sweets.
•Compost all the organic waste.
•Recycle the paper and plastic waste which results from making the marmalade.
Our partners / collaborators with the local community
•Cyprus Millers: free supply of sugar & 9 recycle bins
•European project “Walk the Global Walk”: free supply of two compost bins.
•Kokkinos Supermarket: free supply of glass jars for product placement.
•Bardakis Strawberries: free supply of strawberries
•Local Authorities, local Churches and the Parents Association: help out in selling our products.
 
•   We achieved constant communication with our partners and especially “Cyprus Millers” who are delighted to help us out and they contribute in ideas and supplies. They donated us 9 bins for paper and plastic to use outdoors and they also supplied us with 10kg of sugar. They also supplied us with pastry in order to bake strawberry tarts and the materials to bake cup cakes during the celebrations for pi (3.14). We benefited a lot from this project, as we realized that local companies are willing to spend time and money to support our school and our efforts to teach our students real life techniques.
The contribution of our group members to the project

How did we make the citrus and strawberry products?

Students: At the beginning 9 students, Maria Stylianou, Sotiria Paraskeua, Antonia Therapontos, Maria Therapontos, Loizos Loizi, Konstantinos Nikolaou, Georgia Zisi, Chrystalla Parpareshi and Natalia Pieri,  who washed, cut and measured the citrus fruit and with the help of our school’s staff, they decided to make a citrus marmalade. Later on a lot of other students, helped to make strawberry marmalade, strawberry tarts, cup cakes and citrus juice.

Teachers: Some teachers guided the students to make the marmalade.

3 vice principles: Melpo Mouaimi, who came up with the idea, brought citrus fruits and organized the event. Adamos Markou, who managed to supply us with a hundred  glass jars in partnership with Kokkinos Supermarket and Christina Kyprianou, who managed to provide us with 10 kg of sugar from Cyprus Millers, brought more citrus fruits and helped out making the marmalade.

School staff and parents: tasted the products and assessed their taste.

External Associates: (read the section Co-creation with societal actors)

•       The reason we joined the SALL project was to make our students aware how to use products such as citrus and strawberries from our area and transform them into marmalades rather than waste it. We were also encouraged by our partners, who are always helpful and ready to assist us.
•       We are looking forward to participating in SALL again as we have established excellent relations with our
        partners and hopefully we’ll be able to address other problems in the future.
•       We would love to continue to be a part of the SALL community!