A dedicated team of 30 Okanagan College students is off to Toronto this week.
Declared regional champions in recent Western Canada Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) competitions, the team has been practising for nationals, which run May 9 to 12.
The program is delivered by ACE, a national, charitable organization that is teaching and igniting young Canadians to create brighter futures for themselves and their communities.
Okanagan College competed in three different categories, winning in the Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship challenges and taking runner-up spot in the Environmental category.
Salmon Arm resident Steven DeBoer is a member of the college’s Financial Literacy team that will now compete with students from other colleges and universities across the country.
DeBoer says the teams operate throughout the year, working hard to build relationships with alumni, the college, faculty and the business advisory board.
“We try to bring experience from all over the place to make ourselves successful,” says DeBoer, who is going into his fourth year of business administration, with a major in accounting.
Two of this year’s projects had a direct impact on the Salmon Arm community.
The Campbell’s Let’s Can Hunger collected 80,000 pounds of food for food banks throughout the Shuswap and Okanagan.
Members of the team have also been working with a local music production company, helping R&R Productions to improve their branding and marketing with a goal of improving opportunities for new and developing musicians.
“It’s more than just good grades now, you have to bring something else to the table,” he says. “And SIFE gives us the opportunity to put what we’re learning into practice and bring real world experience into a job.”
DeBoer says team members can tell prospective employers they have led projects, managed teams and developed a number of other bankable assets.
But most recently, he and his teammates have been practising for the nationals – scripting, reviewing, perfecting their audio-visual presentation.
“It has to be flawless,” he says, noting each exactly 10-minute presentation is followed by a five-minute question and and answer session. “We have 10 minutes and it’s gotta be perfect.”