JESSICA BIBER
Currents Editor
Pepperdine Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) proved they were not only business-savvy, but could stand out from the competition when they made it to the National Exposition after competing at the Los Angeles SIFE USA Regional Competition on Monday.
“It’s pretty exciting,” SIFE president Josh Fadley said. “SIFE really promotes the competition like a team sport. It’s an event to go.”
SIFE is an organization in which students create projects aimed at helping people develop financial success and sustainability. Projects include everything from teaching basic accounting to homeless people in downtown Los Angeles to showing people in Africa how to sell art to make a living. The organization exists in more than 40 countries at more than 1,200 college campuses worldwide. Not limited to business majors as the name may imply, SIFE uses the efforts of all disciplines to make a difference in communities around the world.
Regional competitions occur during March and April around the United States. Each region is broken into five or six leagues, and teams within the leagues compete with one another to make it to the National Exposition. This year the Pepperdine team competed against six other schools, including Pomona College, University of Arizona and Cal Poly.
“I think we won because of the quality of our projects,” Fadley said. “We did a lot that impacted a lot of people, not only locally but abroad.”
One such project was partnering with Saddleback Church in Orange County to help communities in Rwanda. The church regularly sends missionaries to Rwanda, and every time people return they bring back cards made of carved banana bark that show scenes of Africa.
“We figured if we brought back cards to the U.S. we could make a lot of money here,” Fadley said. “So we began selling the cards to make money for an orphanage that is devastated by AIDS. We ended up making $3,500.”
Fadley and his fellow SIFE members hope to rotate the villages that make the cards so there can be a constant supply of cards and therefore a steady stream of income for different villages in Rwanda.
The Pepperdine team also created two homeless initiatives to show homeless people how to balance checkbooks, start bank accounts and budget. Dr. Connie James, a member of the SIFE advisory board and professor of business at Pepperdine, said one of her favorite projects was aimed at helping homeless people in the L.A. community.
“They work with the homeless in Ventura, helping them to improve their work skills and find shelter,” James said. “That’s pretty amazing. They’re talking about helping 900 homeless people.”
Dr. Mike Mullen, the acting moderator of SIFE and professor of business at Pepperdine, said he had a feeling Pepperdine would make it to the National Exposition.
“Deep down in my heart I certainly did [know they would make it] because they put so much effort in,” Mullen said. “You never know what the judges are looking for. I was not surprised, but elated because someone else recognized it.”
Mullen thought the group dynamic and experience helped the group reach Nationals.
“This is a very low-maintenance group. They don’t require a lot of hand-holding. They are self-starters, creative and very driven in a positive sense,” Mullen said. “I think they had some truly fantastic projects this year. They were experienced from their past exposure… and they were able to motivate each other.”
With the Regional Competition behind them, the team members are now looking to the National Exposition, which will be held May 13-15 in Chicago. At the National Exposition, teams present the projects they completed during the school year for a spot at the SIFE World Cup.
Though the Pepperdine team has made it to the national level four out of the past five years, it has never made it past the first round of the competition out of a potential three. This is partly because, as a new team, Pepperdine works with a budget of around $5,000 for the year, while other schools use more than $100,000 to fund projects. According to senior Gabriel Johnson, who is also director of human resources and technology for SIFE, this year the Pepperdine SIFE team could make it farther than they ever have before.
“It is extremely competitive. The teams are extremely polished. But we can’t do anything about what we have done or what the other teams have already done,” Johnson said. “I think having a solid presentation is the biggest thing, and we’ve done some really good projects this year. Last year, we didn’t have a single international project. This year we have three. I think we have a chance of getting out of the first round based on our projects, given that we have a strong presentation.”
But, perhaps Fadley summed it up best when he admitted winning and losing is not the main part of the event.
“You do it in a competitive environment, but the spirit of it is to share what you’ve done to provide other teams with ideas as well,” Fadley said. “Yes, you’re competing, but it’s a positive competition. You don’t do it to say, ‘look what we did, but look what we are all doing to make a difference.”’
04-10-2008