UA SIFE Team Wins Fifth Regional Championship

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama Students In Free Enterprise team was named a Regional Champion at the SIFE USA Regional Competition held in Atlanta this week.

The event was one of 12 SIFE USA Regional Competitions being held across the United States in March and April.

“This was our best showing in our seven years of SIFE participation,” said David Ford, SIFE sponsor, clinical lecturer in management and Sam Walton Fellow. “The team was flawless in the execution of its presentation.”

UA SIFE is one of nearly 600 programs in the United States. Participating students use business concepts to develop community outreach projects that improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.

During this academic year, the UA SIFE team organized more than 10 projects in West Alabama and around the world, including The ABC Project, Microfinance Project, The Green Team and 6Sides.

The ABC Project was aimed at reducing student dropout rates in Vance and in China through a cultural exchange blog with SIFE students at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.The Microfinance Project established a program to make microloans available to entrepreneurs in Alabama and Vietnam.The Green Team was a two-part initiative to improve environmental sustainability through recycling, and 6Sides is a non-profit community-based web store and consulting group that buys and sells student work products,

“We used a strategy of thinking globally and acting locally, or going ‘glocal’ as we like to call it, to make a difference in our community through entrepreneurship, education and environmental sustainability,” said Rachel Hester, UA SIFE President. “We are proud of our fifth consecutive regional championship and even prouder of our impact as a team.”

The culmination of the SIFE program is the annual series of competitions that provide a forum for teams to present the results of their projects and to be evaluated by business leaders serving as judges.Teams compete first at the regional and national levels, then at the international level when the national champion teams from each country meet at the SIFE World Cup.

As a SIFE USA Regional Champion, the UA-SIFE team now advances to the 2011 SIFE USA National Exposition in Minneapolis, Minn., May 10-12.