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Current Projects
Daisy Lab – Dairy without the cow
Daisy Lab are creating dairy identical proteins without the cows, using precision fermentation technology. These proteins can be used in the production of traditional dairy products like yoghurts and ice-creams. The final products are suitable for vegans, but their market is any traditional dairy consumer. The Westpac NZ Government Innovation funding will allow Daisy Lab to extend their research by adding additional species and proteins, as well as an additional team member to their R&D team. It will also help purchase the necessary reagents and equipment, increasing their chances of success in carrying their research through to lab-scale fermentation, in-turn contributing to the decarbonisation of Aotearoa.
View case study
Cawthron Institute – Decarbonising Aotearoa through large-scale seagrass regeneration
Seagrasses, flowering plants that live in shallow coastal waters, have huge potential as a tool to fight climate change. Overseas, they have been shown capture carbon up to 27 times faster than temperate forests and are estimated to absorb 10% of the ocean’s carbon each year, despite covering less than 0.2% of the seafloor. Unfortunately, seagrass meadows are being lost at an alarming rate worldwide. Restoring these meadows will greatly increase the carbon storage potential of our oceans, helping to mitigate climate change. However, we currently lack knowledge on how to restore these habitats using seeds in Aotearoa. Cawthron’s solution is to conduct the necessary research to develop a blueprint for seed-based seagrass restoration. This blueprint will provide community groups, councils, iwi and others with a step-by-step guide to restore seagrass meadows across Aotearoa.
Restoring Aotearoa New Zealand's Seagrass Meadows - Cawthron Institute
Infrastructure Sustainability Council – Accelerating and scaling decarbonisation and wellbeing outcomes through infrastructure sustainability
The Infrastructure Sustainability Council is developing a digital rating tool and supporting materials calculator, tailored to the NZ market to support decarbonisation of infrastructure in NZ. The funding will help bring this tool to market faster and make it more accessible, scalable, and cost effective. The funding will also be used to ensure appropriate capability building to achieve wide scale adoption of the product and broader acceptance and the support to change the hearts and minds in this critical sector.
Infrastructure Sustainability Council (iscouncil.org)
Auckland Council – Students Decarbonising Schools
The Students Decarbonising Schools programme, an initiative led by Auckland Council, will empower students to identify practical, high impact solutions that will support them to take climate action in their schools and communities. It will harness the power of collective action, encourage wider societal behaviour change and learnings will be shared nationally to help shape the future direction of student-led climate action and the decarbonisation of Aotearoa’s schools.
Trust Alliance NZ
Building on the already established Trust Alliance NZ (TANZ) workstreams to continue development of an interoperable, yet secure, data sharing framework for all sectors of the primary industry, which enables key stakeholders & data owners across the value chain to share data in a permissioned and controlled manner, while freeing growers, producers and others from redundant, repetitive submission of the same data over and over to different government organisations.
TANZ Website
InSite - Reynolds Group Ltd
A solution to enhance and verify compliance with HACCP best practices in food processors, increase transparency with supply chain partners, decrease compliance costs, and provide control and security when sharing commercially sensitive information.
Reynolds Group Ltd Website
Social Accountability At Sea
Ackama, in partnership with Terra Moana Limited are developing and trialing a technical solution to enable fishing companies to self-assess against the complex matrix of major Conventions, Standards and Criteria, including from NGOs (local & international) to ensure they operate best practice worker welfare and enable them to show that their products are free from human rights abuse.
Manurewa High School Te Kura Tuarua o Manurewa - Business Academy
The Manurewa High Business Academy programme is designed to prepare large numbers of young Māori and Pacifica for their future in work. They create powerful learning connections with experts from business, and life changing opportunities and pathways for employment, that smash barriers for young people and their communities.
View case study
Signal My Soft Skills and Employability: A Digital Resource for Job Seekers
Soft skills are one of the hardest aspects of employability to signal to employers - especially if your work experience or personal work networks are limited. Most employers want soft skills, but few agree on how to define or measure them. EMPLE will be gathering feedback from envisaged user groups (job seekers, youth, vulnerable worker groups) to validate tool demand and requirements as well as potential tool partners. Output will be a high quality report and recommendations.
Supply Chain Transparency Research
Research commissioned by the fund on the current state of supply chain transparency
Link to resources:
Non-standard work survey - Accordant
A survey and subsequent report led by Accordant sought feedback from significant numbers of contingent workers, and also from hiring stakeholders in the government sector, regarding non-permanent work. The aim was to grow the knowledge base around non-permanent work in the public sector. The report covers a range of valuable insights, observations, and opportunities, including:
- Why organisations and job seekers should consider non-permanent work
- The benefits of temporary work for both workers and employers
- How to overcome barriers and improve the temporary worker experience
- Ways to reshape the hiring process and improve onboarding for non-permanent workers
- How to grow impact and productivity to maximise the benefits of a temporary workforce
The findings of the research can be found on the Accordant website.
Accordant Website
- Why organisations and job seekers should consider non-permanent work
- The benefits of temporary work for both workers and employers
- How to overcome barriers and improve the temporary worker experience
- Ways to reshape the hiring process and improve onboarding for non-permanent workers
- How to grow impact and productivity to maximise the benefits of a temporary workforce
The findings of the research can be found on the Accordant website.
Socius XR
VR applications to help those with neuro-diversities practice social interaction in relation to employment.
Over 70 million people are on the Autism spectrum globally, and over 93,000 in New Zealand. Engagement challenges in social settings can significantly impact opportunities to obtain employment for neuro-diverse people, Socius XR are leading change in using emerging technologies to mitigate these barriers.
Socius XR's website
Over 70 million people are on the Autism spectrum globally, and over 93,000 in New Zealand. Engagement challenges in social settings can significantly impact opportunities to obtain employment for neuro-diverse people, Socius XR are leading change in using emerging technologies to mitigate these barriers.
The Social Experiment - The Online Experiment 2021
A radical educational alternative that prioritises mindset as the foundation to approach the future of work as a life-long learner with a meaningful contribution.
In the face of unprecedented societal and ecological challenges, Millennials and Gen Z's are demanding opportunities to create meaningful change. Traditional education and leadership methods are not equipping our rangatahi to meet the future needs of work. The Social Experiment (SOX) is a programme designed by and for millennials and Gen Z's, helping them to find purpose in their current or future workplace while giving them the tools and skills to make an impact.
The Social Experiment Website
In the face of unprecedented societal and ecological challenges, Millennials and Gen Z's are demanding opportunities to create meaningful change. Traditional education and leadership methods are not equipping our rangatahi to meet the future needs of work. The Social Experiment (SOX) is a programme designed by and for millennials and Gen Z's, helping them to find purpose in their current or future workplace while giving them the tools and skills to make an impact.
Future of Work skills systems research - Ivanov Consulting
Ivanov Consulting is conducting research into (and assessment of accessibility to) the systems NZ have in place to teach Future of Work skills. From this research, a report of the existing programmes (government and non-government) designed to address the Future of Work skills gaps will be created.
Ivanov Consulting website
Future of Work Research
A Research Report commissioned by the fund, and executed by ThinkPlace on the Future of Work, to support our fifth Intake.
Link to download the Report
Pocketful
Pocketful is a mobile financial inclusion application that brings together a AI driven chatbot (Penny), budgeting, ID, payments, financial training and connections to the financial assistance ecosystem to deliver an integrated financial fitness solution. Pocketful helps you easily create a daily budget, set up a savings plan, put together a plan to get out of debt, connect to support services… everything you need to get financially fit.
The Wellbeing Protocol - Rethinking Community Grants
The Wellbeing Protocol is building digital tools to empower our communities. One area where our communities struggle the most is navigating the complexities of the grant funding ecosystem. In late 2022 WGIF joined Sport NZ and Callaghan Innovation to support The Wellbeing Protocol's efforts to develop a new grant funding model.
Find out more
Our Whare Our Fale
Central Pacific Collective (CPC) aims to build up to 300 fit-for-purpose, secure and affordable homes for Pacific families in Eastern Porirua. The funding proposition is a research project within the Our Whare Our Fale programme to inform the important design characteristics when developing housing for Pacific communities. The project will inform the design of housing and, more importantly, the design of the community, and how the houses and amenities relate to deliver community cohesion and wellbeing outcomes that support the vision of “Reimagining the Pacific village in 21st century Aotearoa”.
Ka Uruora
Ka Uruora operates a collective iwi-led partnership delivery model that collaboratively brings together iwi, Crown, community & values-aligned funding & service partners to deliver housing & supporting services to improve Māori inter-generational access home ownership & quality housing. Based on its Taranaki experience and learnings, the Ka Uruora model is now ready to be rolled out as a national iwi-led model to other regions across Aotearoa. This funding application would support Ka Uruora implement the expansion of its model into the new regions, including establishing local iwi-led engagement, education, support & service delivery partnerships to support local iwi and Māori in these regions access home ownership & quality housing.
Equotee
Equotee is developing a flexible equity management platform for homes. It is meeting a rise in a trend of first home buyers "banding together to achieve more" for affordable housing In Aotearoa. Equotee will also meet multiple needs including those of papakāinga, equity-partners or guarantors. The software is intended to enable users to leverage their equity positions to reduce barriers to housing pathways or to enable co-owners to do more with existing equity such as home improvements or the retrofitting homes to lower carbon footprints.