BCIT Student Team Earns Top Honours For Financial Education Efforts

From acecanada.ca

Local students named regional champions by showing young Canadians how to plan a sustainable financial future

Toronto, ON (March 17, 2011) – BCIT’s Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) team has been named the 2011 SIFE Financial Education Challenge Regional Champion by national charitable organization Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE). SIFE is a team based program that encourages post secondary students to address relevant economic, social and environmental issues by empowering others to improve their quality of life and standard of living.

“This award helps bring awareness to what we are actively doing in our community and proves to everyone involved that our activities are worth it and we are making a difference,” explains Jessica Agur, SIFE Team President.

Student teams from across Western Canada showcased their financial education-focused projects to panels of industry professionals on March 14, 2011. The SIFE team from BCIT stood out to the judges because of their dedication to teaching others the basics of financial literacy in their own community.

One of the team’s newest projects is called Save It Forward. The student team is partnering with the Financial Management Association to empower young Canadians with the tools to lower their personal debt and to plan for a sustainable financial future. First, the team is implementing a series of four personal financial literacy clinics, led by both students and experts in the financial field. Second, the participants take what they have learned from the clinics and transfer this knowledge to a friend. In the final phase, students will submit a detailed description of how they plan to implement their financial education for a chance to win prize money for their own saving. In the next few years, SIFE BCIT plans to expand this project to reach students at other universities and young families struggling to manage their finances effectively.

“With over 26,000 community participants impacted by SIFE team financial education projects across Canada last year, we are proud to continue this national challenge that effectively provides others with the skills to make informed and positive financial decisions,” explains Amy Harder, ACE President. “Through our SIFE teams’ accomplishments, ACE is ensuring the future of our country is in good hands – today and tomorrow.

The end goal of this annual challenge is for SIFE teams to help improve the ability of others in their community to make informed and positive financial decisions. Teams have been provided the necessary tools and training from ACE to develop and implement their extensive projects. The BCIT student team will now move on to the national level of competition taking place on May 10th at the 2011 ACE National Exposition in Toronto, ON.

About ACE

ACE is a national, charitable organization that is teaching and igniting young Canadians to create brighter futures for themselves and their communities. ACE delivers a team-based program called Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) and an individual-based program, Student Entrepreneur. ACE students created 540 jobs, logged 273,000 volunteer hours and directly impacted 114,000 people in the past year alone. In the past three years, students have generated over $80,000,000 in economic opportunity. ACE is currently established on over 55 post-secondary campuses across Canada.
Contact:
Jaime Szegvary
Communications Consultant, ACE
416.619.8994
jaime@acecanada.ca

Marlene Romero
Student, SIFE BCIT
778.987.7300
cmromero.85@gmail.com

 

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