18 September 2021

Over 18-20 September, North Asia Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence partnered with Young Enterprise, Education New Zealand, and MEXT (Japanese Government) to run the first-ever BizVenture Japan.

Forty high-school students from Japan and New Zealand split up into groups to develop business cases aimed at tackling the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The winning New Zealand team proposed a sustainable fashion clothing range aimed at tackling teenagers’ mental health, called ‘It’s OK to not be OK’. The winning Japanese team conceived of an app which would encourage young Japanese fathers to be more engaged with their parenting and housework duties through gamification and changing cultural norms.