Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
SIFE stands for Students In Free Enterprise and is a non-profit international organisation
in which students are called to set up and run a number of social outreach projects with
the aim of empowering people in need. So SIFE is more than just a simple university society,
it is an international network, composed of university students, university staff and
businesses who share the same aim of driving a positive change in the local community.
I decided to join SIFE because it gave me the opportunity to do something practical,
to apply all my knowledge and skills, that I was learning throughout my time at university
and have a positive impact in the community, while at the same time, setting up and building
some solid foundations for my future career.
And I decided to join SIFE in the first instance to help people in need, because SIFE projects,
every year touch thousands of peoples’ lives in a very profound and sustainable way. And
I wanted to give my contribution to leave a positive mark in this world through our
work. And on the other hand, I realised how many opportunities SIFE offers us, so as David
said, I managed to gain so many valuable skills and that will impress employers.
So this year we had ten projects overall, two commercial and eight social projects.
As to the major projects, there were two projects which we continued on from last year, so they
have since then had a longer time to grow and develop, these were our Enterprise Academy
Project and our Bulgaria, Breaking the Circle Project. So the Enterprise Academy Project
worked this year with four schools in the Birmingham area, which were all underachieving
schools, and affected the lives of more than one hundred school children. The Bulgaria
Project, which I personally worked on in the second year, works with orphans in Bulgaria
who have to leave orphanages by the age of eighteen, and they are left without any support
network. They don’t have the right employability skills, and they don’t have money or anything
to start life in the real world. We have managed this year to set-up a soap making business
with these young people to teach them how to lead an enterprise and to gain valuable
skills. I think the nicest quote we had from one of the orphans working on the project
was that he finally feels like he has a purpose in life, like he is useful and he actually
can achieve something and do something, and just for this, it has been so worthwhile to
work on all of our projects this year.
The major highlights of the society this year were the fact that we managed to involve more
than one hundred and ten students from across the campus and we managed to go through the
semi-final round at the national competition, as well as winning the Wilkinson Entrepreneurship
Award and the Guild Community Impact Award.
The plans for the society in the year ahead to achieve sustainability on all aspects of
our society, this means as a society itself, we want to be sustainable and have a constant
number of people involved in our projects. But also we want our projects to be sustainable
and profoundly affect people’s lives.
From a student perspective, I’d like the society to create even more opportunities
for students to learn and to enhance their employability profiles so that they will be
better equipped to face and tackle the demands of the job market in these tough economic
times.