Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) teaches students about how they can help make a difference around the world.
SIFE volunteer Amanda Dacko, a second- year business student at Okanagan College, presented the InStill Life program to Grade 5 students at Beairsto school.
The students explained how the program worked in their classroom.
Brookner Tobin: “The first day, we had bread and feta cheese and olives and olive oil and talked about where our food comes from and how we are all interconnected, and import and export.”
Ian Oliphant: “We looked at photos and paintings of fruit and vegetables and did our own paintings and made cards of them to sell for $3 each.”
Rylan Henry: “We learned about entrepreneurs in the Third World and how a little bit of money could help them by lending online through KIVA (an organization that makes small loans to entrepreneurs).”
Danica Ariano: “We got our cards and talked about the benefits of different fruits and vegetables.”
Lee Christensen: “We learned how to sell the cards to family and friends and tell them about how we are helping KIVA. We made $243 to lend.”
Ciarra Sullivan: “I enjoyed it. I love doing art. We are going to go online and make our micro-loans.”
“The InStill Life program teaches the students to think about how they can address needs in their communities and others,” said Dacko, one of 19 SIFE student volunteers doing different programs in the community with faculty advisors Barbara Nudd and Garth Maguire.
“The students are really keen and excited and the teachers integrated the project into the curriculum. We talked to them about entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and financial literacy, which were new concepts to some of them. They told us about ideas they had about what they could do in their own time to help others. They realized they could make a difference. It’s a great program and I look forward to being able to do it again next year, maybe with more schools.”
