CAIRO: Students from the French University in Egypt (FUE) became the first Egyptian and Arab team to win the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) World Cup 2009 for the best community outreach project.
Teams from 40 countries met in Berlin, Germany, where the awards were announced.
FUE’s winning project is based in the Warraq neighborhood in Cairo. It started in 2005 and plans to run until 2015.
“The project works on the economic development of Warraq and it isn’t through charity by distributing clothes and money, but through making the people independent by teaching them business skills and they work to generate their income, explained Moataz Helmy, president of FUE’s SIFE 2009 team.
The project includes a number of areas, the largest of which is the micro-business project which trains the youth in Warraq on how to raise rabbits on the rooftops of their houses or any vacant space they have.
They are given the rabbits and their food and are trained on how to raise them in a hygienic way and how to use them as a business project. Within a certain period they are required to start producing.
The new born rabbits are given to someone else to keep on the cycle. “Our objective is that within 10 years, rabbits would be an integral part of Warraq’s economy, said Helmy.
For the women, they have opened a small-scale factory that produces clothes. The neighborhood’s female residents were trained on how to market their products and participate in fairs.
“We want the women of the area to be productive and their role wouldn’t be confined only to cooking and raising the children, said Helmy.
But getting into Warraq wasn’t easy. “People didn’t accept us in the beginning; they were defensive when dealing with us. They were looking at us and thinking ‘your are well-off and go to a private university what do you want to do with us?, said Lobna El Gaby, a member of SIFE FUE.
FUE got to represent Egypt at the World Cup after its team won the sixth national competition last July, in which students from 15 universities were asked to present projects they initiated and implemented over the academic year. Judges included Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Hany Helal as well as representatives of SIFE’s different sponsors.
SIFE first came into Egypt in 2003. The American University in Cairo won the national competition the first two years, then Misr International University won for two year and FUE won last year and this year.
“It was a great award for our effort but was even more rewarding was how we saw the change in people’s lives after the implementation of our project, Fatma Naim, a member of SIFE FUE.
SIFE’s mission is “to bring together the top leaders of today and tomorrow to create a better, more sustainable world through the positive power of business, as stated on its official website.
Each team has to present a written annual report and live audio visual presentation for their project and they are evaluated based on how successful and how much impact they achieved using business concepts to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.
The competition begins with the teams divided on eight opening round leagues. From the opening round, two finalists from each league advance to one of four semi-final round leagues. Canada, Egypt, Germany and India reached the final, and got the opportunity to present their project to a distinguished group of international business leaders.
More than 2,000 university students, academic professionals and business executives attended the 9th annual SIFE World Cup this year.
