Roberts Wesleyan SIFE Team wins
regional competition, heads to Kansas City

The Roberts Wesleyan College chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (RWC-SIFE) won a trip to nationals at the 2004 SIFE Regional Competition and Career Opportunity Fair. RWC-SIFE tested its educational outreach projects against 18 other SIFE teams, including Wilberforce, Cedarville, Rio Grande, Purdue, Glenville State and Sullivan universities.

From their league, Roberts Wesleyan and Cedarville will proceed to national competition in Kansas City in May. "It was by far the toughest competition we've faced in the three year's we've competed," said Ervin Starr, RWC-SIFE advisor. "We had to make a few last-minute changes to our presentation because of technology challenges, but then everything went very smoothly."

Students in Free Enterprise, an international organization, encourages students to apply lessons from the classroom to real-life situations, using their knowledge of free enterprise to improve life in their communities. RWC-SIFE has touched the Rochester community this year in several ways, including the Women of Hope Business Camp. This week-long camp in February provided nine students from the Global Media Arts School at Franklin the opportunity to live on Roberts' campus and learn about small business. These students have already been given office space and an adviser to begin implementing ideas to improve their school after meeting with one of the week's presenters, David Dey, director of Roberts' Institute for Social Entrepreneurship. RWC-SIFE has also sparked entrepreneurship in other parts of the world. In the city of Theethipalayam, India, RWC-SIFE has helped launch a public library, a tailoring school, and a micro-dairy farm. To start the library RWC-SIFE collected 10,000 books from Rochester donors and shipped them to India, with the help of the Roberts Business Advisory Board. The tailoring school and micro-dairy projects remain in progress.

At competition, teams are judged on how well their projects taught others the principles of free enterprise. Regional champions from 22 competitions throughout the United States will present their projects at the 2004 SIFE USA National Exposition, hosted by the Kansas City Business Community, May 23-25 in Missouri. The national champion in the four-year division will travel to Barcelona, Spain, to compete at SIFE World Cup 2004.