Blog

SIFE Sendoff Party

On Monday, Marian Killpack and her team put together a GU SIFE sendoff party for our team. This party was designed to celebrate our success and showcase our Nationals presentation to the rest of the school. We had a great turnout and we are very excited to head to Nationals next week in Minneapolis. Please let us know if you are wanting to come to Nationals as a part of our team so we can sign you up with SIFE USA. For those of you that are coming, we can't wait to see you!

Roundtable

Last week our SIFE team hosted the 20th Annual Entrepreneurial Roundtable. It was great with speakers like Duane Sandage and other very successful entrepreneurs. The event was coordinated by several people, a big thanks to Jan Gray, Justin Akers and Jeff McElroy. The events team planned the event and executed the day seamlessly. Graceland students were fortunate enough to hear business story after story from real life entrepreneurs who have built their own companies. The presentation team also shared our teams story over lunch which was a humbling experience for all in attendance.

Stock Market

The Stock Market Simulation team has just recently finished teaching sessions in the classrooms of Leon, Mount Ayr, and Wayne High Schools. Our last teaching session in each class emphasized the importance of opening 529 college savings plans to the students. The students of each class were sent home with a brochure on a 529 plan and how to open one either on the web or through a broker nearby. Simulation day on April the 20th is right around the corner and the team will be very busy over the week by creating decorations, making name-tags, learning how to run the simulation system etc. The students who come with proof of opening a 529 college savings plan the day of the simulation will be entered in a drawing to win a new touch ipod nano! We are hoping to see great results considering this awesome prize. Looking forward to the simulation!

-Brady

Doing Good

The GU SIFE Doing good team is staying connected with the Lamoni food pantry via Gwen Simpson. We will be visiting the pantry this Thursday and have helped unload food there twice. The Doing Good teamg will also be starting a new set of courses soon.

Regionals

For those of you that have not heard, Graceland SIFE is a Regional Champion. We will be heading to Minneapolis, MN in May and we would love your support for those that care to join us.

Kids Bank

The Graceland University SIFE Kids Bank team is excited to enter into Mt Ayr's 5th grade classroom for the second year in a row, starting April 12th. The team will teach three lessons all lead by first year team member, Garrett Shank. The account deadline to open new accounts will be April 28th. Unfortunately, the team will not be able to host a scholarship party for the newly opened account holders and essay writers; however, students will still receive a $400 scholarship to GU. The students will only be required to write an essay if the student already has a bank account. The SIFE team helps students who open new accounts start with $20, $10 donated by the bank and $10 donated by GU SIFE. If student already has an account, the GU SIFE team donates $10 to the existing account. We are excited about the progress of this project and hope to have lots of new accounts opened.

Regionals

ONE WEEK UNTIL REGIONALS!

HealthEd Connect

Happy Spring Break!

Today I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Jac and Sherri Kirkpatrick of HealthEd Connect. We had a wonderful lunch filled with conversation and laughter. We were able to exchange pictures and information about Africa.

Jac and Sherri informed me of the operation with the IGA project. It seems that the chairman of one of the committees abused his power and now the committee has decided to replace that person. In the other committee, the chairman was not acting in a timely manner for the project so they have decided to replace him as well. We are so excited to hear these groups are self governing.

The project has also been generating income. Although Jac and Sherri did not have an exact number we were excited to hear the bikes are being utilized. We hope to hear an amount soon.

Regionals is only a short time away so all the information we received will be very useful. We look forward to telling you more about our competition preparation.

Kid's Bank

The Kids Bank Team is excited to announce the new accounts opened by students at Central-Decatur Elementary School. The 5th grade students opened accounts at Great Western Bank and Farmers Bank of Northern Missouri. We also had several students who had existing accounts.

Last year in Leon we only partnered with one bank and there weren't any accounts open. However this year we partnered with two banks and had six new accounts open!

Now that Kids Bank in Leon is done, we have started our lessons for JA Biztown with the 6th graders at Lamoni. On Thursday the 6th graders became JA Biztown citizens by taking the JA Biztown Pledge and registering to vote!

The Kids Bank Team would like to thank the DEKKO Committee for helping us financially with our project. Thank you!

Leadership Council

Hello fellow supporters of GU SIFE! We are excited to annouce that our SIFE presentation team for 2011 have been chosen:

Loralyn Heath

Matthew Waite

Taylor Johnson

Kasy Kiarash

Ian Christenson

Anna Bichiashbili

Alternates:

Jennifer Abraham

Brandon Bennett

As a SIFE team we have a lot of talent that we will be using for furture years in the area of presentations skills. We thank all those who tried out, and we are excited to be enterting competition season.

The Leadership Council has come up with a different format for our presentation this year, we won't share it with you now, but we think you will enjoy it. The LC is currently in the process of writing the script, and those who are visually capable on the team are working on the annual report, and video for this years competition. We are excited as we look towards the future with the new criterion and format of our SIFE team as a whole. Please continue to look for new blogs from the different projects, as well as updates from the team!

Stock Market Simulation

This week will conculde our teaching at Central Decatur High School for the third year in a row. The students are very excited to participate in the simulation, which will be held at Graceland University on April 20th, from 10am-1pm. We would like to invite any supporters of the Graceland SIFE team to come watch and enjoy the excitement of the stock market. We also will be starting our teaching at Wayne High School on Thursday, March 3rd. We are deepening our impact of project this year by adding involvement with the parents. The students will be learning about College Savings Accounts, or 529 plans in class, and then will have an opportunity to open a 529 plan with their parents and become eligible for a prize drawing at the Stock Market Simulation.

We also are in the planning stages of the NYSE trip for the second year in a row. Everyone is very excited for the opportunity, and we will potentially be able to send 4-5 of our GU SIFE Stock Market team along to join the experience. Please stay tuned for more updates as we recieve them! ~Loralyn

Presentation Tryouts

Greetings.

Last Thursday and Friday, our team had callbacks for presentation team. For those of you who do not know, presentation team is the group of individuals that tells our story to the judges at competition. We had 14 people show up for callbacks and have a lot of raw talent. We anticipate we will know who has been selected by this week. As soon as the team knows, we will update all of you.

On a similar note, the leadership council has been discussing ideas for the script and will begin writing the script very soon. We are excited about building new team members in the video and annual report areas. We have a few individuals who are very ready and eager to get started.

Check back soon to hear who made the presentation team and about all our projects.

Stock Market Challenge

The Stock Market Team just finished teaching in Mount Ayr last week which proved to be an awesome experience. Different team members attended each day (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) of last week, and almost everyone on our team was exposed to how the class sessions work. The high school students seemed to enjoy the lessons, and took a lot away from them as well. The differences between the pre and post tests that we gave them were significant for almost every student. They are all of course very excited about the New York trip as well, and so is our team. We are doing our best to pull this trip off again, as it is a great opportunity for any high school student/sife team member to see the real New York Stock Exchange. We've also added two new schools to our list this year including Wayne High School and Central Decatur. Expanding this project to as many surrounding schools as possible was one of our main goals from a year ago. This week is a preparation week, and next week we will be in Central Decatur teaching more high school kids about the stock market!

-Brady

Co/Project Manager Stock Market

Spring Semester

This semester our SIFE team has started off with a bang. A lot of projects have really taken off this semester and we are really excited about them. Each of the teams will be blogging soon about their great success so I won't spoil it for you.

We have had our first presentation team tryout and are having call backs on Thursday and Friday. We are very excited to see everyone's talent again and put a team together. As soon as I find out the presentation team, I will let all of you know.

Leadership Council met last week to begin working on the script. We made some progress in the right direction but are still working to find the proper format for the presentation. For those of you that are not aware, the SIFE criteria was consolidated into one criterion this year so we are having to start our presentation from scratch which we are pretty excited to do. This may be a scary task for some but our leadership council is very excited about the opportunity. We will continue to keep you updated on the script writing process.

We're Home

I hope you weren't waiting for a blog to hear we were home safely. I'm very sorry for waiting so long to let everyone know we made it. We had a slight delay in D.C. but had no major problems other than that.

Our semester is now in session and we're getting on the road with our projects. We are continuing many of our projects from last semester and are very excited about the team we have to work with. Keep checking back with us to hear about our projects.

Africa

Greetings!

We only have a small update for you, as we are mainly just working on our workshop and enjoying Africa.

We have completed two days of our workshop in Chingola and things have been going well so far. We have over 30 participants so we are very happy about the increase in numbers. We have two days left in our workshop and cannot wait to present the bikes to the group.

We are done with our workshop every day by 1 P.M. our time so if anyone would like to call we would love to talk.

Please check back with us to hear more about our adventures.

T.I.A. Waka Waka

Africa

Muli Shani ("How are you?" in Bimba)

Our workshop in Ndola/Chipulukusu is now complete. Overall, the workshop was a success. We presented the group with two bicycles and one cart. There was a lot excitement in the community about their new project.

Friday night after the workshop, we were invited to have dinner at Gershom's (the pastor) home. We had a lovely meal and returned home to pack our things and celebrate Jac's birthday. Michelle arranged for us to have some cake and ice cream (African style), which we were very excited about. After dinner the six of us sat around and played games. Rhonda fell out of her chair because of the intensity of our games. We laughed for nearly 10 minutes.

This morning we had breakfast and were greeted by an 18 passenger van. I know you're thinking of a nice big fan but we were very cramped. All our luggage nearly came crashing down on Taylor, Margaret and me quite a few times on our way. We arrived in Chingola around 2:30 and have settled into our guest house.

Tomorrow we will be going to church in the village. After church we will be relaxing and preparing to begin another workshop.

Check back to hear more about our adventure.

T.I.A. Waka Waka.

Africa

Whelp, I almost got pick pocketed as we were walking to the internet cafe by two small children no older than 12. We made it here safely though thanks to our guide, Patrick, and Michelle, who got called by a few choice words in the process.

I'm so excited to tell you about how successfully the workshop is going. We have now completed three very good days and are very excited for tomorrow. We have almost all decisions made as far as the bicycle business is concerned and we are about to be up and running. The group we are working with has decided that they would like two bicycles and one cart because they feel this would be best for their community. They have also made nominations for the committee that will oversee the project and come up with a name. Hopefully, with the training the SIFE team has provided them they can run a successful business and eventually expand.

After our workshop today, we went with a few of the Kafwa (health care workers) to visit a few of their clients. It was so sad to see the how HIV/AIDS was affecting their community. It was an emotional experience for us and we'd love to tell you more about it when we return.

We are very excited to share all our wonderful stories with you once we return. Keep checking back to hear more.

T.I.A. Waka Waka

Africa

Yesterday, we started our day by attending church. Although we didn't know a lot of what was going on because it mostly in Bimba (the native language) we really enjoyed participating in what we could. After church we were invited to have lunch with on of the caregivers in the village. We were introduced to the traditional African meal of sheema. As far as I can tell everyone really enjoyed it because we also had it for dinner and everyone dove in.

Today was the first day of training. A mistranslation occurred in church yesterday so all the participants thought they could participate in both trainings. Everyone had signed up to do the Child Support Specialist training and we unfortunately did not have anyone sign up for our training. Once we figured out the problem we found a way to reconcile it. Jac spoke with the group and we will begin our training with some of the participants in the CSS training as well as some new members from the community. We are very excited to see how everything goes. We will be updating you on what happens as soon as possible. Keep checking back please.

T.I.A. Waka Waka.

Africa

We finally have internet! Sorry it has taken so long for us to update you on our status. So here is the day by day breakdown since we last updated.

Thursday

We went to Victoria Falls which was beautiful. After viewing the falls, Jac took a few of us on a hike down mountain (not sure if that's the right word for it but you get the idea)while the others stayed at the top for some shopping. On the way back up the mountain Taylor and Matt had an altercation with a baboon. Taylor decided to entice it with some candy and the baboon ended up trying to steal Matt's bag. It's a good story now because everyone is safe but it could have ended bad. After the falls we all returned to Jollyboys so Taylor, Jac, Cherry, Michelle and me (Jen) could pack our bags. We took our flight to Lusaka in order to get some prep work done before the rest of the team arrived. The rest of the team got the privilege of staying behind at Jollyboys and enjoying some relaxing time.

Friday

The team for Lusaka set out in order to find the right bikes for our project. First we visited World Bicycle Relief, which is a non-profit that works with giving bikes to those in need to help them generate income. After getting a lot of valuable information from World Bicycle Relief we headed to Zambikes. Zambikes picked us up and took us to view their facilities and discuss options for bikes we could get as well as everything they offer. We decided it would be best to go with Zambikes. We ended up deciding to order four bikes, two for each village, for sure and we are waiting to talk to those in the villages before we decide what else we think is necessary to order. We want to ensure the community has a need for everything we might possibly provide. We were very happy with the decision we made and are looking forward to how the communities will react to our decisions.

The rest of the team took a bus from Livingstone to Lusaka so in the afternoon we met up with them at the hotel. The SIFE team enjoyed a night of conversation and laughter.

Today (Saturday)

Another bus ride for everyone. We departed from Lusaka at 8:30 this morning and arrived in Ndola around 1:00. From there we got settled into our new home for the next week and grabbed some lunch/dinner. We happened to come across an internet cafe and we able to give you an update on our progress.

We're not sure when our next update will be but please continue to check back with us. We are looking forward to being in the village this week and can't wait to share with you any updates we may have.

T.I.A. Waka Waka