Business club members help Third World countries

By Brittany Harder\nbharder@indiana.edu\nThird World countries are receiving a helping hand from IU students. \nThanks to members of Students in Free Enterprise artisans, those who would likely be unemployed around the world are earning a profit selling their wares to a project called Ten Thousand Villages, according to information from \n. \n"SIFE is a global partnership between business and higher education that mobilizes university students to create economic opportunity for others while discovering their own potential," according the organization's Web site, www.sife.org. "SIFE students form teams on their university campuses and develop outreach projects that teach entrepreneurship, market economics, business ethics and finance in their communities."\nTen Thousand Villages is one of the business ethics projects IU members are currently working with. \nTen Thousand Villages is a fair-trade organization founded in 1946 by the Mennonite Central Committee in Pennsylvania, according to organization's Web site, www.tenthousandvillages.com. Artisans from more than 30 countries sell handmade goods -- everything from home decor to musical instruments -- to the organization. These goods are then sold in the Ten Thousand Villages' stores and at festival sales. SIFE members hope to open a store in Bloomington in the future.\nSIFE members are hosting six sales in Bloomington this semester to increase awareness about fair trade and to raise funds to open a Ten Thousand Villages store in the community, said Meghan Cutsumbis, vice president of SIFE. During their most recent sale, members set up a booth in Showers Plaza on Oct. 1 during the Multicultural festival. One customer, Cutsumbis said, became interested in the idea of fair trade and offered to help SIFE open a store in Bloomington.\nSIFE is more than just Ten Thousand Villages. Several other businesses and organizations are benefiting from the members' hard work. \nMembers increased financial literacy in local Girl Scouts by 27 percent by teaching them about ATMs, debit cards and family budgeting, according to SIFE information brochures. The organization has had success in marketing Frances & Grace, a high-end laptop bag design company, and has started working with a local hair salon in hopes of attracting more student customers. \nAt the end of each year, SIFE chapters from multiple campuses present their projects to a panel of judges. Though SIFE IU was established in 2004, it won the regional championship in Cincinnati last year. \n"Being such a fresh, new organization, to actually come home with a trophy was an amazing feeling," said senior Emily Hoover, president of SIFE. \nOpportunities to network with major companies like Proctor & Gamble and Wal-Mart are also part of the competition, Hoover said. She believes her internship with Macy's West was a direct result of her involvement with SIFE. \nIU offers a one- to two-credit course for SIFE members, in which students share ideas and discuss team goals for each project. The class is led by SIFE's faculty advisor, Mary Embry. \n"Students have remarked that SIFE has given them a true, real-world sense of what is possible when working as a team with a common goal," Embry said. \nHoover said she is eager about the coming year and hopes to spread her enthusiasm to new members.\n"We're so optimistic about this year," she said. "We hope that everyone else can feel our excitement about SIFE and benefit from it like we have"