ELLENBROOK Secondary College (ESC) students have won the Just Start IT WA competition, taking home $5000 in prize money.

The team of Year 9 students designed an app called field 2 fork, connecting WA farmers directly with consumers to minimise waste and lower fruit and vegetable costs.

ESC’s gifted and talented program coordinator Shaloni Naik said the school wanted their students to be involved in a program that fostered skills for the future.

“Just Start IT builds enterprise skills, often referred to as entrepreneurial skills, which are crucial for students. These include skills like teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and resilience,” she said.

Students learned key business skills that Ms Naik said they will be able to take with them into the workforce after they graduate, such as forming practical solutions in problem solving, smart investment strategies, and being able to consider an idea from others’ perspectives.

“We wanted our students to be involved in this program because they benefit from learning through exploration, discovery, and creativity – these approaches foster deeper understanding, critical thinking, and adaptability,” she said.

In their pitch presentation, students described their startup as a platform that connects farmers directly to consumers, helping both parties combat wastage and get more fresh, local produce into consumers’ hands.

“Field 2 fork serves as a platform to make it easier for farmers to advertise and organise selling their surplus produce with geofencing and marketing features, ensuring they don’t miss possible profits,” Ms Naik said.

“For consumers, we help them navigate pick-your-own processes responsibly and discover new farms all in an organised manner with booking, interactive mapping, pre-purchased boxes and communication features.

“Our original idea targeted consumers on a low budget, suggesting an app for low-ingredient recipes. However, as we validated this and conducted more research, we realised farmers have problems with drop-and-rot and selling surplus.”

Ms Naik said this led to the idea that they could satisfy a double-sided market by connecting the two of them simultaneously.

“With this, we decided that we can make something to reach farms to people’s tables, essentially bringing WA fields to our forks,” she said.

The student team is putting the cash prize towards further development of their startup idea, and were eager to continue building on the idea and to be able to put it to use in the community.