Belmont University’s Students in Free Enterprise Team has won first place in the southeast regional SIFE competition, and will next compete in the national competition in Kansas City, Mo., May 21-23. This is an incredible achievement for a team created only one year ago. The Belmont team is coached by assistant finance professor John Gonas. About 800 universities around the country take part in similar events. SIFE also sponsors a World Cup that involves universities from other countries. Last year’s international winner was University of Zimbabwe.
At the Memphis regionals, Belmont’s SIFE team competed against teams from 30 other universities, including Alabama State, Alcorn State, Arkansas State, Arkansas Tech, Auburn, Harding, Jackson State, Lincoln University, Loyola University New Orleans, Mississippi University For Women , the University of Alabama, the University of Memphis, Union, the University of Tulsa and several others.
For a complete report on the SIFE team’s projects, click here.
SIFE (www.sife.org) describes its mission as, “Mobilizing university students to create economic opportunity for others while discovering their own potential.”
SIFE is a global non-profit organization active in more than 40 countries, funded by financial contributions from corporations, entrepreneurs, foundations, government agencies and individuals. Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE establishes student teams on university campuses, led by faculty advisers and challenged to develop community outreach projects that reach SIFE’s five educational topics: Market Economics, Success Skills, Entrepreneurship, Financial Literacy and Business Ethics.
SIFE team members leverage their personal educational experiences, the expertise of their faculty advisers, the support of their local business advisory boards, and the resources of their institutions to implement programs that create real economic opportunities for members of their communities. The effectiveness of their programs is judged at competition.
Each national SIFE organization conducts a national competition, which is judged by leaders from its business community. At competition, SIFE teams present the results of their educational outreach projects and compete to determine which team was most successful at creating economic opportunity for others. SIFE National Champion teams advance to the top level of competition, the SIFE World Cup.
