IU SIFE students win regionals

The members of IU’s Students in Free Enterprise group won a regional competition March 28 in Chicago and are advancing to the SIFE National Exposition, which will take place May 10-12 in Minneapolis.

SIFE is an international nonprofit organization in which student teams from more than 1,400 universities across the world apply business concepts to develop outreach projects in order to make a difference in their communities.

The group is all about empowering individuals to make changes for a better world, said Eric Nelson, president of the IU Bloomington SIFE chapter.

Marci Reid, vice president of project sustainability for the IU SIFE chapter, said SIFE differs from other activities at IU.

“SIFE is more than an extracurricular activity. It allows students to use the material they have been learning in class and apply it to real life projects they feel passionate about,” Reid said. “It’s a great way to meet and collaborate with other students from all departments at IU while working to impact so many other lives.”

Linda Xiong, vice president of chapter sustainability for SIFE at IU, said she wanted to work with other students on different projects.

“I wanted to give back to Bloomington, especially since it would be my home for four years,” Xiong said. “I wanted to work with students outside of my major and collaborate on community projects. I wanted to use what I learned in classes and apply them to successful projects.”

Six members of the IUB SIFE team competed against other teams from all around the Midwest at the regional competition. The members were Albert Cheung, Chad Edgington, Eric Nelson, Danielle Thoe, Melanie White, Linda Xiong and Laine Zeph.
The rest of the members of IU’s SIFE team supported the competitors.

The team gave a presentation on the projects it worked on this year in front of a panel of judges made up of business professionals from large companies.

“We placed in our division, which moved us on to national competition in May in Minneapolis, where teams from all over the U.S. will compete,” Nelson said. “Placing also won us a $1,000 grant for the organization.”