BYU-Hawaii's chapter of SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) ranked among the top 40 in the nation at the 2005 SIFE USA National Exposition held in Kansas City last week.
SIFE is a global, non-profit organization with student chapters on over 1800 university campuses in more than 40 countries. Each team is given the charge to teach principles of free enterprise—including market economics, entrepreneurship, personal and financial success, and business ethics—through educational outreach projects that better themselves, their communities and their countries. More on SIFE.
BYU-Hawaii's SIFE projects include several annual on-going programs, such as the Business Plan Competition, Entrepreneurship Conference and "Coloring the World"—the creation and distribution of coloring books that teach children the basic issues of honesty and fairness through simple stories.
This year's team also launched several new projects: a cooperative effort with Hakipu'u—a small charter school on the windward side of Oahu—to teach "at risk" youth how to start and operate a school store; personal finance workshops for students, faculty and community members; and small business development consulting with Deep Ecology and Laie Cash n' Carry, both on the North Shore of Oahu. More on BYU-Hawaii SIFE.
The team communicated the details of their service projects through a brochure and a 24 minute presentation to panels of judges made up of industry leaders in business, finance and entrepreneurship. The team ranked number one in regional competition—a distinction it has earned for the past eight years since the chapter was organized—thus securing them a spot in the national exposition to compete with 159 other universities.
In the opening round of competition at nationals, BYU-Hawaii was awarded first runner up in its league of competition, out-performing large institutions such as the University of Florida and the University of Iowa. Although the team did not advance from the second round of competition, Nathan Tilton, Executive VP of the BYU-Hawaii chapter, reported that many people were "really impressed by what we were able to accomplish in the last year."
"I was just talking with our representative from SIFE world headquarters—she's an administrator that helps all the teams out—and a lot of universities that she's been talking to want to copy our model," he said. "What we were able to do with such a small cadre of students was considered amazing by a lot of people, and they were really impressed by the quality of our program."
BYU-Hawaii students who attended the national exposition were mutually impressed by the level of service other schools were able to accomplish.
"Just seeing what level of projects other students were able to accomplish gave us such a greater vision of what potential we have," said Samuel Dauphinee, VP of Entrepreneurship. "The competitive nature [of the expo] has driven the level of service to something so much higher than I have ever seen in my life."
"From this competition, we feel that our vision has expanded a lot," added Jari Voutilainen, VP of Business Affairs. "For this next year, our goals are much higher and the size of our projects will be much bigger."
Tilton is president elect for BYU-Hawaii's SIFE chapter and will take the lead in implementing the ideas and vision they brought home from the national expo. Along with the rest of the team, he is excited for next year's possibilities for growth and improvement.
"Among other things, we're going to be actively seeking out more students to assist with projects," he said. "We're turning our focus to be more international—to areas that send us students that have less of the advantage. We want to go into those countries and create opportunities, as well as continue to affect the people of Hawaii."