As our slogan has been, it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a child to raise the Earth.

A term that has become increasingly popularised over the last 10 or 20 years is disruption. This type of disruption refers to the way our uber-intelligent counterparts that we refer to as “computers” are changing our lives in every possible way. Uber, disrupting the taxi industry. Airbnb, disrupting the accommodation industry. Bio-meat, perhaps soon to disrupt the agriculture economy?

Nevertheless, it is not for us to decide but to ride this wave of disruption. This year’s Young Enterprise team has done precisely that. The 2016 team, Tribal, sought out an area of New Zealand society that desperately needed disrupting, and laid out a plan of action to do so.

Tribal is a computer program for children to create and read personalised eBooks. One opens the program, enters three character names and a location, and the software adds those details to the stories, thereby making each story customised by the reader.

The disruption we attempted to create was in the languages industry. Every year, thousands of primary-aged children immigrate to New Zealand with their parents from Samoa, Tonga, the Philippines, etc. Almost all end up in English speaking schools and lose their native tongue, and thus lose a vital connection to their culture, heritage and whanau.

Tribal, being in English and Samoan, provided a solution to this. Our product, available for a $5 download, gave primary aged children a fun, interactive means to maintain a connection to their native language.

As a company, we were made up of 10 STC students; Hamish Simpson, Tim Marshall, Ben O’Connell, Patrick Elia, Tommy Taualai, Jade Uliano, Asoono Puni, George Khella, Casper Fui and Leon Barrowcliffe. Each of us played a role in developing content, engaging with our R&D partners, developing software, translating content, illustrating the stories or more general work such as accounting or management.

Our partnership with St James Primary in Aranui proved to be the most valuable part of creating content. Judy Parry, Jo Barlow and Mareta Pelenato all were incredibly helpful in facilitating engagement with the pupils of St James and we learned plenty from the experience.

After a long but fruitful year, we were announced as the Canterbury Regional Winner for 2016 and also won the National Excellence Award for International Development, both awards we were honoured to accept.

Tribal has been a journey, not just for its directors but for all we connected with. Myself, having run three successful YES businesses now, am proud to be carrying this particular project on into 2017 with Hamish, with the view of establishing more content, Filipino, Te Reo and Tongan options, and expansion into a writing interface.

So, while disruption may be a fad, phase or simply a “cool” moniker, Tribal is a legacy project for the STC students involved, our mentor Keith Yardley, and all others involved. We cannot afford to let our current education system mute diversity of language, and we hope Tribal will continue to provide a cure, or “disruption”, for this. As our slogan has been, it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a child to raise the Earth.

Tim Marshall