Adam Muirhead, a born-and-raised Thompsonite now in his final year studying business administration at Brandon University, paid a visit to the Thompson Chamber of Commerce Dec. 22 to talk about his experiences with Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), a worldwide student entrepreneurship program.
"The SIFE program mobilizes students to form teams at the universities," said Muirhead. "These teams then use the skills they are learning in their degrees to solve problems within their community in entrepreneurial fashion." Almost 50,000 students from 39 countries take part in SIFE, which in Canada is run by a group called Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship.
Muirhead, who will be entering a chartered accountant program with Meyers Norris Penny after he graduates in the spring - works as part of a team with 35 other students in Brandon, where they have set up programs ranging from teaching financial literacy skills to new Canadians to teaching high school students about the importance of agriculture.
"All of our programs are run at no cost to people who participate," he said. "Our team operates on the philosophy that you can't be charging people a fee for running programs when they're already in need."
Specific programs run by Muirhead's team also included an agri-business initiative in which the team went into Brandon-area high schools and encouraged students to look at agriculture and entrepreneurship as viable career options, and a small business consulting program where the SIFE team works with local businesses to help them in areas where they could use some help. "We were working with a local gym," explained Muirhead. "She was having trouble marketing her business, so we helped her with large-scale advertising."
In addition to the practical component of creating and running these programs, though, there is also a competitive aspect to SIFE. Each SIFE team competes with others on the regional, national, and international levels, presenting their accomplishments to a panel of respected business leaders.
The Brandon team impressed those businesspeople enough that not only did they advance to the national competition, they finished third overall at that event, as well as second in the subject of entrepreneurship - they also qualified for the nationals under environmental sustainability. "This was a huge thrill for our school and our organization, because we finished ahead of many larger schools such as University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Toronto," said Muirhead.
Though Brandon's SIFE team does not currently have any projects underway in Thompson, Muirhead noted the potential to work with the Burntwood Regional Health Authority and University College of the North in the future.
"If you are a student, you gain from real-world application of the various skills you are learning in the classroom, along with experiences in areas that you may not be receiving in the classroom, such as presentation skills," said Muirhead. "My involvement in the organization is a driving force for why I was able to secure employment for myself five months before I even graduated."
