Understanding SIFE
The Organization
Founded in 1975, Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) has grown to become one of the largest university-based organizations in the world. SIFE teams are active in more than 40 countries around the world. You can always visit www.sife.org to find a complete list of the countries that operate a SIFE program as well as the universities enrolled.
Working together as a team, and through the mentorship of a faculty advisor(s), SIFE students apply their classroom experiences to develop and implement educational outreach programs that teach individuals in their communities the principles of market economics, success skills, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, environmental sustainability, and business ethics.
The challenge to SIFE teams is not simply to inform, but to empower – to help their targeted audiences reach their full potential through a better understanding of the principles of free enterprise. Individually, SIFE teams are improving the quality of life and standard of living for members of their communities. Collectively, the focused effort of hundreds of SIFE teams and the thousands of faculty, students, and supporting community leaders driving these teams, have created a positive and sweeping force for change that impacts the lives of millions and is literally changing the world.
The Individual SIFE Team
SIFE teams are organized by individual university campuses. There are intentionally very few rules or procedures established by the SIFE World Headquarters for how these teams are organized and structured. Some teams will have one faculty advisor and others will have several; some teams will have a large number of student participants and others will have a small number; some teams will establish eligibility requirements for membership on the team and others will offer membership to any interested student; some teams will have a very complex organizational structure with multiple officer positions and others will have a very flat structure; some teams will have arranged for SIFE students to receive academic credit and others have not, etc.
Every institution is unique, as is the community it serves, thus the flexibility in organization allows each school to organize and structure its SIFE team in a manner that best fits its faculty, student and community needs.
This same flexibility applies to each team’s educational efforts. The only parameters that SIFE World Headquarters places on project activity is that teams educational programs should be designed to create economic opportunity for others by helping them learn about 1)market economics, 2)success skills, 3)entrepreneurship, 4)financial literacy , 5) environmental sustainability and 6)business ethics. Beyond this, questions as to how many projects teams choose to do, which audiences they target their outreach efforts, whether they design original educational material or use pre-designed material, etc., are all left to the discretion of each team.
The Competition
The academic year ends with the SIFE Overall Competition. This process provides teams with the opportunity to present their educational outreach efforts to a panel of judges who evaluate those efforts and determine which teams had the most impact improving the quality of life and standard of living for members of their community. This competitive process creates a “best-practice” sharing environment and fosters a healthy spirit of competition, which drives and rewards excellence.
Every country that operates a SIFE program, at minimum, organizes a national competition, from which one institution will be named national champion and advance to compete at the SIFE World Cup. Countries that operate large SIFE programs may host a series of regional competitions to narrow down the number of teams eligible to compete at their national competition. In every country around the world, and at each level of the overall competition, the format, rules and judging criteria remain the same.