April 14, 2005 Print this page

La Salle’s Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) Team
Wins Regional Competition for Second Straight Year

The La Salle University Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) Team returned to Philadelphia as winners after participating in the Boston, MA SIFE USA Regional Competition on April 4, 2005. La Salle competed against 18 other colleges, and has won the Boston regional two years in a row.

The team is now a finalist in the SIFE USA National Free Market Economics Competition May 22-24 in Kansas City, MO. The Boston competition is one of 21 SIFE USA Regional Competitions held across the United States in April.

During the 2004-05 academic year, the La Salle SIFE squad organized 10 projects in the Philadelphia community, including a project in which team members went to the Hill-Freedman Middle School in Philadelphia’s Germantown section.

“It was really a great experience teaching these young kids about the stock market,” said team member Dan Lawson. “They were extremely receptive and were able to apply the material we taught when buying the stocks. I believe we really made an impact on them and hopefully they will be able to use what they learned in the stock market game later in life when they decide to invest in real stocks.”

Lorraine C. deSouza, secretary of the team, said, "This year we all worked extremely hard to accomplish our goal to advance to the national competition. As we start to build our new team for next year, we have all become closer as a team, which has allowed us to once again win at Boston.”

SIFE President Michael Antonelli summed up the team’s success and accomplishments over the last year. “This year, I believe that we finally have made an impact nationally as well as internationally. We now have our goals set on the national title, which, for the first time in our team’s history, is within our grasp. The team’s success is all due to the hard work and dedication throughout the school year, and everyone on the team was instrumental in sweeping the Regional Competition.”

SIFE is an international non-profit organization active on 1,800 university campuses in more than 40 countries. SIFE teams create economic opportunities in their communities by organizing outreach projects that teach: market economics, entrepreneurship, personal financial success skills and business ethics. Their projects are judged at competition on creativity, innovation and effectiveness.