SIFE Stenden South Africa
A Mind For Business And a Heart For The World
‘To bring together the top leaders of today and tomorrow to create a better, more sustainable world through the positive power of business.’
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Stenden South Africa is very proud and excited about its outreach initiative, SIFE. Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) is a non-profit international organisation that engages students with their local communities to help to uplift them in various economic and business related initiatives. SIFE has over 40 countries that take part each year with more than 42,000 students participating, creating a total of 1500 active teams.
These initiatives are strategically put together by a number of today’s top business leaders, who join SIFE in the hope of implementing the SIFE slogan of ‘Doing well by doing good.’ Partaking organisations are required to form challenges and competitions that are designed to get students in tertiary institutions to engage and participate with the local community. Each challenge and competition is based upon business and economic related enterprises.
Students must harness the business knowledge that they have been taught in the classroom and apply it to real-world business issues, in order to be an effective and efficient team. SIFE is challenging and team orientated; it teaches responsibility, motivation and communication skills, as well as the expertise needed to plan and execute projects. All of these abilities are necessary in order to become a socially responsible and highly effective business leader.
Students who compete in the SIFE challenges and competitions go up against other South African tertiary institutions that form part of SIFE South Africa. Some examples of other participating universities in South Africa include: the University of Cape Town, Rhodes, the University of Johannesburg and Monash. Stenden competes against these universities and others, with the goal of winning the national competition.
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SIFE is an initiative undertaken by the staff and students of Stenden South Africa. Grand Tour students (Stenden students on exchange from the Netherlands and other international Stenden campus sites) and Stenden South African students join together to participate in the SIFE initiative, with an elected board comprised of Stenden South African students.
These board members are responsible for certain tasks, such as: leading the team in their efforts to spur the growth of SIFE, recruiting other students to join SIFE, gaining public awareness, obtaining sponsorship locally and nationally, preparing for the national competition presentations and collecting funds and budgeting.
Grand Tour students, completing their Entrepreneurship minor at Stenden South Africa, support and continue the hard work in the community projects. Their work has already begun in the heart of the Port Alfred Township NeMaTo (Nelson Mandela Township) by upgrading the Entrepreneurship Centre for the benefit and growth of the local community.
The Executive Board that is serving SIFE Stenden 2012/2013 is as follows:
President: Zandile Sikali
Vice President: Mbachi Kamwendo
Secretary/PR: Memory Rigava
Finance: Nkageng Mogatle
Sales and Marketing: Nobuhle Maseva
Project Director: Samantha Mitchell
H.R: Stephanie Kabamba
The National Competitions 2012
The SIFE National Competition creates a platform for participating South African universities to present the community work that they have done during the year. They are then judged by a panel of the top businessmen in the country and one winner is chosen to represent the country in the SIFE World Cup in Malaysia, in October. Although there is only one winner, at the end of the day, all of the participants are winners to their beneficiaries, having improved their standard of living in one way or another.
This year’s results:
SIFE Stenden did very well in this year’s National Competitions, achieving third place in our league. This is a huge achievement for the team, as we were up against the University of Pretoria, the National Champion for 2012. The national competitions have helped us to grow as a team – we have become better people from our experiences. We have set our hopes and goals on winning the Nationals next year.
SIFE Stenden did very well in this year’s National Competitions, achieving third place in our league. This is a huge achievement for the team, as we were up against the University of Pretoria, the National Champion for 2012. The national competitions have helped us to grow as a team – we have become better people from our experiences. We have set our hopes and goals on winning the Nationals next year.
The Projects
Currently we are focused on four projects, which include:
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1. The Sakingomso Learning Centre: the centre offers computer tutorials in the Nemato Township.
2. Silikamva Bakery: this project has ten direct male beneficiaries. We chose male beneficiaries in order to address and shift society’s perception that men are incapable of providing for their families.
3. Ikaya Labantu Arts and Crafts: "Ikaya Labantu" means home for the people, and is an initiative of the Sakingomso Brand. The beneficiaries of this project make arts and crafts and export them to the European market.
4. Ingubo: an aftercare centre that takes children away from the dump, providing them with birth certificates and enrolling them in schools, in order to give them an opportunity to better their lives.
The vision of SIFE Stenden South Africa:
“Giving an identity where there was merely a face.”
