GCCA | Graduate Careers Council of Australia

Graduate Careers Australia

ergo - Number 92 September 2003

Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) 2003

Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) is an international non-profit, non-government organisation with teams in more than 1000 tertiary campuses around the world. SIFE’s vision is to help young people achieve their goals through enterprise education, and its mission is to provide university students with the best opportunities to make a difference in business and the community. This is achieved through developing leadership, teamwork and communications skills, through learning, practicing and teaching innovation and responsible enterprise. In 2003, SIFE Australia sponsors include Arnott’s, Heinz, KPMG, Qantas, The Reject Shop, Woolworths Limited, Ernst & Young, Cadbury Schweppes and Dick Smith.

The National Competition
Each year, SIFE Australia teams travel to the SIFE Australia National Competition to present their projects to a panel of distinguished business judges, and to compete for the title of SIFE Australia National Champion as well as thousands of dollars in prize money. The 2003 competition was held on the weekend of 18-20 July at the Hilton Hotel in Melbourne.

The outcome of this competition is that a team of nine University of Melbourne students will travel to Mainz, Germany in October to represent Australia at the SIFE 2003 World Cup. Against a field of 22 Australian universities, The University of Melbourne’s SIFE team competed and won to become the SIFE Australia National Champions. The team’s members were drawn from various degree programs, including Arts, Economics/Commerce, Business information Systems, International Business, Law and Medicine.
To win the national championship, the students made an oral presentation and submitted their SIFE Annual Report to a panel of judges from the business community. They described two continuing projects on which they have been working in their own time.

Two Business Plans Submitted
The first of these was the development of a plan for tenants to run a refurbished café/milk bar in a high-rise block of public housing flats in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. The second was a program which involved teaching disadvantaged young people to create websites for local merchants in a shopping strip in West Heidelberg, also in Melbourne.

Students joined the University of Melbourne SIFE team in one of two ways. One source of team members is the credit subject Managing Work and Projects, a third year subject developed specially for humanities and social sciences students, who do not normally have a chance to learn much about the business world. Four of the current SIFE team have studied this subject.

The Industry Consultants Program
The other way for University of Melbourne students to join SIFE is through the non-credit Industry Consultants program which is coordinated by the University’s Careers & Employment Unit in Student Programs. Students involved in both of these programs carry out projects for host employers, giving them a solid background for joining SIFE. The other way for University of Melbourne students to join SIFE is through the non-credit Industry Consultants program. Students involved in both of these programs carry out projects for host employers, giving them a solid background for joining SIFE.

The team’s SIFE Fellow Ms Emma O’Connell, and Dr. Joanna Tapper from the winning team’s Advisors Board, are coordinators for the subject Managing Work and Projects. The Industry Consultants program is also coordinated by Emma O’Connell.

Two Awards Won
The judges indicated in their summary that both projects fromThe University of Melbourne’s team were impressive due to their focus on teaching others about free enterprise, helping disadvantaged communities and their business acumen. In addition to the National Championship Trophy, the team won 5 airfares and $5,000 to enable them to compete in the SIFE World Cup. The team also won another major award, the Dick Smith Best Entrepreneurial Project, which was worth $2,000.
The students will continue to work on their projects, and will be coached by their Business Advisory Board in preparation for Germany.