By Lisa Pires and Tracy Leparulo
Who is SIFE Ryerson?
SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) Ryerson is a national award-winning team, involved in projects that impact both our local community as well as people around the world. We focus on giving others the hands-on experience they need to achieve personal and professional success. SIFE Ryerson fosters entrepreneurship, encourages creative thinking, and connects like-minded students.
In May 2010, SIFE Ryerson became National Champions at the ACE (Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship) National Exposition. At that moment, we became “SIFE Canada,” and have since been working hard in preparation for October’s SIFE World Cup in Los Angeles.
How we won:
This year, our 100+ members worked on 49 projects that impacted over 4,000 individuals and created over $3.3 million in new economic opportunity. You can imagine how hard it was to compact all of that information into a 24-minute presentation.
First, we decided to highlight seven of our largest initiatives that impacted everyone from clean technology businesses to teenage mothers.
Our largest program, StartMeUp Ryerson, helps local, national, and international entrepreneurs start and expand their business. This year we positively impacted 68 entrepreneurs by providing mentorship, resources, funding and educational events. We realized that people respond much better to personalized accounts than simply being “talked at,” so instead of explaining every little step in the StartMeUp Ryerson process, we decided to “tell the story” of just a few of our many successful participants. This story-telling strategy helped engage ACE judges while showcasing our comprehensive program.
SIFE Ryerson also talked about many of our brand new initiatives, including the Digital Media Zone. This innovative space located in the heart of downtown Toronto helps digital media start-ups develop their business. We understood that many of the ACE judges would never see the Digital Media Zone in person, so we decided to bring the space to them. Judges “toured” the space by viewing our high-quality photos that showcased the Digital Media Zone’s size, the number of people using it, and its great location overlooking one of the busiest intersections in Toronto. This visual representation helped judges understand the importance of the Digital Media Zone, and its impact on the lives of young entrepreneurs.
SIFE Ryerson highlighted our $tart$mart program during our presentation as well, which teaches financial literacy to students, at-risk youth and young mothers by creating a customized program to help individual audiences achieve financial independence. SIFE Ryerson chose to showcase what we called “testimonials” – short, 30 second clips in which a few $tart$mart participants talked about how the program helped them save money. By putting a face to the program, and a name to the numbers, ACE judges clearly saw how we positively impacted those around us.
Perhaps most importantly, SIFE Ryerson became SIFE Canada by showcasing our passion. We danced in the aisles in between presentations, we deafened the audience when cheering for our presenters, and our 24-minute presentation was filled with photos of enthusiastic students who willingly devoted their time to helping their community.
So, in answer to your question: our passion, dedication, and hard work earned us the title of National Champions.
Lisa Pires and Tracy Leparulo are SIFE Ryerson executives.
