News

University of Melbourne SIFE Team National Champions

Media Release, Thursday 19 July 2007

The University of Melbourne’s Student in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team are off to New York after winning the national competition.

The team also won three of the six individual project awards, including Best Competitive Skills Training Project, Best Ethical Business Practice Project and Best Team Sustainability Strategy. The competition, which ran from July 5 to 7, is judged by the CEO’s and Directors of some of Australia’s largest companies, including Michael Luscombe (Woolworths), Mark Smith (Cadbury Schweppes), Harry Debney (Visy) and Tracey Wright (Hallmark).

The Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce, Professor Margaret Abernethy, says the team showed outstanding community involvement with their projects. “These students demonstrated a real commitment to community engagement and their work represents knowledge transfer at its finest.

“The students in the team represent six faculties and their projects reflect the multi-discipline approach taken. They are to be congratulated.”

The team presented 5 projects at the competition, each designed to have a positive economic and social impact on a broad range of groups in need. One of the impressive projects called “Community Voicemail” is being developed in conjunction with Cisco Systems. The aim of the project is to equip homeless people with free individual voicemail services so that they have a point of contact to communicate with welfare agencies, housing organization, potential employers, friends and family. The project is currently being tested with 100 Big Issue vendors. Another of the projects, “Enabled Initiatives”, is aimed at providing business skill workshops and support for members of disability community service, Yooralla.


Catherine Casler, this years President, fellow student Ken Wong, who is the Chair of the Business Advisory Board and the team are all to be congratulated for their tireless efforts throughout the year. The 60 strong team are engaged in significant and worthwhile projects across Melbourne.

Dr Leisa Sargent, one of the academics involved in helping the students prepare for the three day competition, says the event was a great opportunity for the students to test their ideas in a real world environment. “The team truly showcased the significant social, economic and educational contributions they are making in the community and showed us how to be entrepreneurs. They’ve developed important skills in project management, trade marking and financial management.”

Qantas will assist the team to travel to New York to compete at the World Cup in October.