Students at DCU win top marks for social-inclusion business model

A TEAM from Dublin City University has won the inaugural Students in Free Enterprise (Sife) Ireland competition which took place in Dublin yesterday.

The students won with a social-inclusion business model aimed at creating an “engaged, equipped and empowered student body that is active in shaping the future of Ireland”.

The global competition aims to bring students and businesses together to implement programmes for social change and DCU will now represent Ireland at the 2012 Sife World Cup, an event to be hosted by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in Washington DC in September.

The winning team comprised Daithí de Buitléir, Ronan O Dálaigh, Sallyanne Downes, Evelyn Boyle, Hannah Dobson and Paul Gillick.

Among the elements showcased in their presentation were Bus Banter, a programme aimed at combating loneliness and isolation on public transport; Operation Paint Ballymun, which seeks to inspire and empower at-risk children to stay in education through the medium of the creative arts; and Raising and Giving Ireland, which reaches out to students lacking in direction and despairing about their future role in society.

As part of the competition, four teams from DCU, NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, were asked to identify and develop outreach projects designed to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people with a particular social need in a practical way.

The teams presented their projects in Dublin yesterday to a panel of judges comprising senior business leaders. Among the judges were Leinster Rugby captain, Leo Cullen, who joined Sife Ireland earlier this year as a non-executive director, and managing director of The Irish Times Limited, Liam Kavanagh.

Presenting the winning team with their award, Minister for Education and Skills Ruairí Quinn said they had demonstrated “the importance and value of education as a powerful tool with which to address and engineer social change to empower communities in need”. He said the presentations were “the culmination of months of hard work and dedication, of which the students, their mentors and all involved in Sife can justifiably be proud”.

Sife, a not-for-profit organisation, was founded in the US in 1975, and is the world’s largest university-based partnership between business and higher education for social change.

Its objective is to encourage university students to make a positive difference to their communities, while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders of the future. Ireland became the 39th country to join Sife earlier this year.

Details of all the team projects can be found online at sifeireland.org.