Students of Slobido-Rykhtivskyi Lyceum Launch Lunch Snack — Healthy Snacks for Their School and Community
In Slobido-Rykhtivskyi Lyceum, with the support of the Platform for Social Change, students are creating Lunch Snack — a social enterprise focused on healthy snacks for the school and the wider community. The idea emerged from a very practical problem: during breaks, students often left the school premises to buy snacks in nearby shops. As a result, they could be late for lessons and usually chose chips, sweets, and other unhealthy products.
The team decided to create a healthier alternative — fruit leather and dried fruit crisps. The lyceum already has part of the raw materials needed for this: there is an orchard on the school grounds with apple and cherry trees, as well as a plot where students have planted raspberries. In the future, the team wants to expand the product range and use other ingredients grown on the school grounds or purchased from local farmers.
Lunch Snack is an attempt to change the school’s food culture, give students practical entrepreneurial experience, and create a small-scale production model that can serve the needs of the lyceum, the village, and the wider community.
An idea created by the students themselves
Students from grades 8–11 joined the project, but the eighth-grade team became the most active. They took part in meetings, worked on the idea, created an Instagram page, prepared promotional materials, and filmed short promo videos.
At the beginning, the team had several ideas. Among them were waste sorting and composting organic waste, as the lyceum has an orchard and a large amount of fallen leaves. However, the idea of healthy snacks interested the students the most. At first, they thought only about producing dried fruit crisps, but after the first trials and tasting sessions, they decided to add fruit leather as well.
The interest of the students themselves became an important signal. When the team first prepared fruit leather and offered it for tasting, students immediately asked whether it would be sold at the lyceum. This showed that the product had demand even before the start of full-scale production.
What participation in the Platform’s programme gave the team
For Slobido-Rykhtivskyi Lyceum, participation in the Bootcamps was their first experience of this kind. The team had an idea, but the programme helped turn it into a clear business model.
The Platform for Social Change gave the students and the school principal a structure: how to shape the idea, describe the product, calculate the cost price, think about customers, present the project, and understand that school entrepreneurship can become real even in a small rural lyceum.
“The children simply had the idea of a healthy snack. But how to make it happen — that is what the Platform team taught us. They taught us how to create a business model,” says Nataliia Mykhailivna Labuniak, Principal of Slobido-Rykhtivskyi Lyceum.
Psychological support and preparation for public speaking were also especially valuable. According to the principal, children from a rural school often communicate more online than in front of an audience. The programme helped them become more confident, learn to speak publicly, present their ideas, and overcome the fear of being visible.
Changes that have already happened among the students
The most visible result of the programme is the change within the team itself. Students began to work not as separate performers, but as a team: they divided roles, identified leaders, agreed on who would be responsible for communication, who would manage the Instagram page, and who would prepare promo and advertising materials.
What could previously have been just “spending time online” became a tool for developing the project. Students created an Instagram page, came up with advertising ideas, and used digital tools and artificial intelligence for practical purposes.
This is an important change: the programme helped students see that their everyday skills can have real value when directed toward a shared goal.
“I can see progress in these children. They have started communicating more, stopped being afraid of the audience, and began working as a team,” says Nataliia Mykhailivna.
Grant support as a way to move from tasting sessions to production
The Lunch Snack team received grant support, which they plan to use to purchase equipment for producing fruit leather and dried fruit crisps. At the time of the interview, the lyceum was still preparing the necessary documentation, but the team already clearly understood what was needed for the launch.
This includes a dehydrator, a cutter, a slicer, and a freezer. This equipment is needed to ensure that production is not seasonal and can operate throughout the year.
During the first trials, the team used a regular oven with a convection mode. That was enough for tasting sessions, but regular production within the lyceum and the community requires professional equipment.
This is where the key role of grant support becomes clear: it does not simply help purchase equipment. It makes it possible to move from a few trial packages to systematic school-based production.
Planned impact in numbers
The Lunch Snack project already has its first benchmarks for future impact.
The team plans to involve not only students from grades 8–11, but also younger students, starting from grade 5. In total, up to 50 students may be involved in production and project-related activities.
The first production targets are:
- up to 300 packages of fruit leather per month;
- up to 150 packages of dried fruit crisps per month;
- the product should be available to around 150 lyceum students;
- the team expects that students will be able to regularly buy healthy snacks at school.
Without professional equipment, the team can only produce a few packages for tasting. With the equipment, the project will have the opportunity to move toward regular production, sales at school, and later — in the village and the wider community.
How the project will change the school
Lunch Snack is expected to influence not only students’ eating habits, but also the learning process itself.
Nataliia Mykhailivna already plans to integrate the work of the school enterprise into craft, technology, and financial literacy classes. The idea is that children should not only make the product, but also learn how to plan a budget, calculate cost price, analyse sales, and understand how money works.
This makes the project not an additional activity, but part of practical learning.
Students will be able to see the full cycle: from growing raw materials and making a product to selling it, earning profit, and deciding where the income should be directed.
The economics of the project
The team is already thinking about the financial logic of production. According to preliminary calculations, the cost price of one package of fruit leather is around UAH 9, while the expected profit from one package is UAH 11.
Importantly, the lyceum has its own raw materials: apples, cherries, and raspberries. This helps reduce the cost of production. If their own raw materials are not enough, the team plans to cooperate with local farmers.
In the future, students want to develop not only school-based sales, but also gift sets with fruit leather and dried fruit crisps, as well as online sales through Instagram.
This opens up the possibility of gradual scaling — from a school product to a local social enterprise.
Social value: more than sales
The team plans to use the money earned by Lunch Snack for students’ needs. Among the ideas are purchasing sports equipment and organising excursions for children who cannot always afford paid trips.
This is an important social component. The project does not only sell healthy snacks — it also creates a resource that can return to the school community.
In the future, students also want to volunteer: to send dried fruit crisps, fruit leather, and later energy bars to soldiers from the community.
That is why Lunch Snack’s impact has several levels: healthier habits among students, practical entrepreneurial learning, an additional resource for the school, support for children, and potential help for the wider community.
Why the Platform was important
One of the main values of the Bootcamps is that participation in the programme is free for schools. For a rural lyceum, this is especially important: the school receives access to training, mentoring, psychological support, and grant opportunities without a financial barrier.
The Platform for Social Change gave the team not only knowledge. It gave them confidence, structure, and belief that even a small school team can create a real project.
“The Platform for Social Change gave us confidence in ourselves. This training gave confidence not only to me, but also to my students,” Nataliia Mykhailivna concludes.
This confidence has already turned into concrete action: students developed an idea, learned to present, work as a team, plan production, and think about the development not only of their product, but also of their school and community.
Conclusion
The story of Lunch Snack shows how a simple school problem can become the basis for a social enterprise.
Students of Slobido-Rykhtivskyi Lyceum started with one question: how can we make sure that children do not run to the shop for unhealthy snacks, but have a healthy alternative at school?
Thanks to the Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamps, this idea has turned into a model of school-based production: with a team, a product, financial calculations, sales plans, a social purpose, and the potential for further development.
Lunch Snack has the potential to change more than just snacks at the lyceum. It can change the approach to learning: make entrepreneurship practical, show students the power of teamwork, and give them experience that will stay with them after school.
