The Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy invites you to a conversation with Debbie Travis.

Debbie Travis’ innate talent for design coupled with her dry British wit has made her a beloved icon and international celebrity throughout North America and around the world.  As Canada’s biggest lifestyle brand, Debbie’s brand extends to television personality, bestselling author, syndicated newspaper columnist, Home Collection designer and inspirational mentor.

Hear how Debbie developed the 10 commandments of entrepreneurship that helped her go from leaving school at 16 to building a multi-million dollar empire in design, publishing, television and branding.

Learn how you can compete to win an internship working on an exciting new Debbie Travis branding project.

Admission is $5 plus service fee. Event begins at 7:00 p.m.
To reserve your seat please visit: http://debbietravis.eventbrite.com

WHEN:
Wednesday, October 5^th, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

WHERE:
Ted Rogers School of Management
Entrance at 55 Dundas Street West
7^th Floor lecture hall, TRS 1-067

Our initial goal in Kenya was to establish a relationship with the organization here and assess the different needs of this community. However, since we have arrived we have found many ways to deliver some of our existing programs to the community members, in hopes that there will be a lasting impact.

After meeting the SIFE USIU team in Nairobi, we saw the need to offer a resource center to local business owners in the city. SIFE Ryerson is in talks with SIFE USIU to expand our StartMeUp program to their campus.

After interviewing many community leaders, we have seen the need to educate the locals on financial literacy. This coming week SIFE Ryerson plans to teach 4 $tart $mart money management seminars to 4 different local groups of Dago, Kenya.

After reviewing the proposals that the family have submitted to external aid networks, we have seen the need to help them create a marketing pitch. SIFE Ryerson is currently reviewing the proposals and creating standardized pitches for the family. We hope that this will help them receive more awareness and the support they need to continue making an impact on their community.

After hearing the stories of locals loosing their homes and lands to micro financing institutions that have hidden fees and high interest rates we saw the need to educate locals on how to manage their loans and create feasible businesses. With the management of the community leaders, SIFE Ryerson has created a program that will educate 5 local businesses on basic business concepts and offer a small micro finance loan. Using a similar process to StartMeUp, we hope to be able to educate these owners as well as give them the capital to implement their ideas. The interests on the loans will go directly to the Orphanage in Dago to help them further sustain themselves.

After seeing the Odoyo’s struggles to sustain the Village’s Orphanage, we found the need to come up with a creative way to create a source of income. SIFE Ryerson plans to implement a sewing project that will create jobs for local high school drop outs and bring a source of revenue not only to the orphanage but the village as a whole.

Our plans to help this community are not only short term but also long term. With one week left, we are working harder then ever to complete as much as we can on site.

Until next time, we only asks our families, friends and supporters to wish us the best of luck.

- The SIFE Ryerson Team in Kenya

At the halfway point of SIFE Ryerson’s trip to Kenya, we are starting to realize the truth in these academics words, how one size entrepreneurship does not fit all. In the past week we have witnessed, assessed, and interviewed various entrepreneurial ventures and we can agree upon one thing; Necessity vs. Opportunistic Entrepreneurship.

SIFE and StartMeUp Ryerson has plenty of practice giving value to Entrepreneurs in Toronto through our events, idea consultations, and resources. We had assumed because of our years of practice we could help entrepreneurs anywhere. However, we had never taken the time to notice that the majority of entrepreneurs in our process are educated, have regular jobs (that they are trying to get out of), and can easily find jobs if their venture crashes.

In Kenya, this is not the case, entrepreneurship is about survival.

Entrepreneurs in Kenya are doing what they can because it is their only means to escape poverty and make a living for them selves. Adding value to these ventures becomes a much more serious game. Here are a few we have met:

Kick it for Kenya – A youth soccer tournament that brings 13 nearby villages together to teach the public about general health and awareness of HIV Aids.

• Photo Sharing – We met three cousins, who grew up without any family or resources to fall back on. Instead of going to work as laborers in the farms for the rest of their days, they saved enough money to buy a camera, laptop, and printer. They saw Kick it for Kenya as an opportunity to sell pictures of the games and events right then and there to make a few extra shillings.

Rennan – The local market, it was here that we truly saw the power of necessity entrepreneurship.

• Local Women – There are one hundred women, each on separate mats selling vegetables their family have grown. All selling the same goods, each woman is just hoping they will walk away with a few Shillings in their pocket.
• Furniture Store – How do you ensure your giving value to your customers? How do you make sure that your customers are able to pay once you begin your project? All these questions seemed irrelevant. The owner markets his furniture by working outside. There are no display cases and no catalogs. Either way, he employs 5 people, all of which work 6 days a week and never run out of work.

Dago Dala Hera – A local orphanage that has had their funding cut off.

• The Odoyo Family – While running a small scale farm they also volunteer their time to build an orphanage to the children in the community. Now with their funding cut off, they are working to make this orphanage sustainable through raising Dairy Cows and Corn Crops.

Though we have spent only 6 days in Kenya, we have had the opportunity to meet entrepreneurs with different backgrounds, experiences, and futures. We are having difficulty truly determining what their needs are because each entrepreneur is so different from the next.

One thing is certain however, they are entrepreneurs not by choice, but by necessity.

We are still planning on meeting many more entrepreneurs with many more stories. Despite the challenges we have faced our team is still confident that we can make, not only survival but, a higher standard of living possible to all these entrepreneurs.

Stay tuned to hear how.

Immediately after breakfast the next day, we are given an orientation by Edwin Odoyo, the co-director of Dago Dala Hera Orphanage. We are brought around the farm and shown the orphanage that the Odoyo family help run. The girls at this orphanage are taken from vulnerable home settings, defined as homes without parents, with one parent or with an abusive setting. Edwin tells us the story of how he and the volunteers at the orphanage often have to track down girls that are sold away to marriages at a young age.

After lunch, we call a meeting with the Odoyo family and community members to learn more about the village and how our skill sets could offer value here. After a three hour consultation we compiled a large list of different projects that we could initiate in the village.

Some of initiatives include:

•   Teaching financial literacy to the village leaders
•   Setting up a computer cafe
•   Reviewing the Orphanage’s sustainability plan
•   Teaching basic proposal writing skills
•   Looking into organic farming & green houses
•   Creating a median between locals and micro finance institutions in Kenya
•   Creating an innovate project that will bring income for the orphanage

… and many more.

Touched by their efforts to offer a safe environment for the children in Dago, we begin seeking answers of how we can help this community and create sustainable solutions to their current problems.

We’ve been in Kenya less than 24 hours and it has been a non-stop ride from the minute we landed until now. Stepping out of the airport, the biggest culture shock was the driving system in Kenya. Pedestrians first, is not a concept known here. However, Nairobi is a highly industrialized city full of culture and warmth. Jambo, a word that means welcome, is effortlessly exchanged between the locals and us. Patrick, our in-country representative, quickly tells us to drop off our bags at our hotel so that he can take us to eat authentic Kenyan food. Whilst trying to take our seats, the waiters usher us to the kitchen to kindly show us their food selection. Patrick laughs at us, as we happily dine on beef stew and a traditional bread called Ugali. He makes sure we are full as he warns us about our upcoming full day.

Of course our days in Kenya start earlier than Toronto, so in no time we are up and ready to have a full day of excitement. We start our day off with what would be considered a short walk for Kenyans (and a camping hike for us) to Java , the restaurant where we had breakfast. It was an adventurous walk, where sidewalks here were mounds of rocks. We could see the bustling citizens forming their sewage system, and were walking inches beside speeding cars.

After a filling breakfast we took a drive to United States International University, where we were to meet the SIFE team. The drive was bumpy, and slow from the new developing infrastructure.

As the doors to United States International University (USIU) open, you see a beautiful campus. It’s an open campus with a lot of pathways leading to many different buildings, tall, short, big, small, new and old. As we explore the journey of each path, SIFE USIU finds us. They had a very warm welcome with their humble nature; they really made us feel part of the SIFE family. After hearing their stories, and understanding their culture and projects we realized that although were from different continents the underlying needs were more similar than we thought. We learned a lot about each others team, and ended off with great plans of collaboration…and of course a big group hug.

This is just the start of something new, as the SIFE USIU team quotes, “The sky is just the beginning”.

Last night, we were unloading our luggage’s, excited for what awaited us in Kenya. The city of Nairobi did not let us down. Within 24 hours, we have made new friends, indulged in Kenyan culture, found like-minded entrepreneurs, identified a need within the community and most importantly made lasting relationships that will hopefully create sustainable movements, from Canada to Kenya.

Next stop: Dago Dala Hera Children’s Orphanage, a 7 hour drive West of Nairobi. With limited Internet access, we hope to update you soon!

Each and every year many groups and organizations go into third world communities to make a difference. A lot of effort and resources go into creating these projects as a means to bridge the gap between the most well-off of the world and the downtrodden. Unfortunately, a lot of these efforts are unfocused and based on ethnocentric views on what needs to done as opposed to what the community wants. On top of that, many of the projects are one-off efforts, unsustainable and unscalable from the very beginning.

Tag Team

These were the issues SIFE Ryerson was faced with when the team decided they wanted to make a global impact this summer in Kenya. Although they had the business knowledge necessary to help, their lack of experience with the culture and community limited the impact they could make. Enter the partnership with Alternative Spring Break (ASB). ASB is a program that provides the opportunity for post-secondary students to be part of a hands-on service learning experience in parts of the world that need it most. Essentially, they encourages participants to “be the change” they want to see in the world.

ASB has run programs all around the world from Costa Rica to Winnipeg, New Orleans to Nicaragua. In fact, this will be the third year ASB is involved with Kenya, and as such their experience in making an impact is second to none. The skillsets of SIFE Ryerson and ABS are mutually exclusive, but at the same time perfectly compatible. The combination of business concepts provided by SIFE Ryerson and the knowledge of the community offered by ASB has made for a natural partnership.

The Impact

The partnership with ASB is a step in the right direction in creating the right project for the village of Dago, Kenya. ASB’s knowledge of the community and firsthand experience in creating programs will go far in helping SIFE Ryerson make something sustainable, but it’s not the complete solution.

To truly create a long term, impactful project, the SIFE Ryerson team itself needs to understand the people and culture they’ll be working with. This, in essence, is the goal of the first year trip: to educate.

The SIFE Ryerson team will be meeting with a number of local and international organizations to video document what entrepreneurship means to the people of the village, as well as learn firsthand about who they will be helping year after year.

Some of the groups the team will be speaking with are:

• Business owners from the urban and rural areas. This will include a woman who started her own general store and cell repair phone shop,  as well as individuals who started businesses based around tourism. (Owners of safari tours, souvenirs etc.)
• Local non-profits including the Founders of the Dago Dala Hera Orphanage, which is also where the team will be staying.
• Local groups including a women’s group run by Pamela Adoyo. . You can read about her work here and here
• A SIFE team in Nairobi, Kenya. SIFE USIU  (United States International University-Africa). SIFE Ryersonwill be meeting with the President, Anne Nabisswa, and her team.

As far as SIFE Ryerson is concerned, there is no difference between a tech start-up here in Toronto or an orphanage in Dago. The team is interested in spreading the culture of entrepreneurship to empower people to dream big.

Making recommendations to the organizations they interact with will of course be a key component of what the SIFE Ryerson team does during the trip. It will be an equal exchange of information as the SIFE team plans on educating as much as they learn.

There are a number of stops on the teams more than two week trip over at Kenya, but one of the most interesting will be aiding in a soccer tournament called “Kick-off for Kenya”.  This is a major event for the Kenyan people and the team is really excited to be a part of it, but not just because of the soccer aspect. Kick-off for Kenya is an event that will not only educate locals about AIDS, but will also allow them to get tested. This is important as AIDS is a prominent issue among the population there.

The culmination of the trip will result in a documentary style video as well as a major project plan on creating a sustainable program that helps entrepreneurs in the village of Dago and the region of Nairobi, Kenya. These two items will be presented to ASB as well as directors and faculty at Ryerson University  following the teams August 29^th return to Canadian soil.

Thankfully, the team over in Kenya will still be communicating with the rest of the SIFE Ryerson team back here in Toronto, so you won’t have to wait until the end of the month for updates about all the overseas excitement. Make sure to check back regularly and follow us on twitter as well as like us on Facebook for all the updates.

Article by Piotr Makuch | @pmakuch

Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE) Canada provides a platform to do just that; explore areas outside one’s comfort zone.

From May 9^th -11^th, 2011, ACE Canada hosted the 2011 ACE Canada National Exposition in Toronto. ACE Canada is a national organization dedicated to teaching and igniting young Canadians to create brighter futures for themselves and their communities. Students leverage the positive power of business to make a difference in their communities.

Over 45 post secondary institutions across Canada competed during this year’s exposition, showcasing the impact of their initiatives locally, nationally and internationally. This is also an amazing opportunity to network with driven students and meet new people.

SIFE Ryerson at the 2011 ACE Canada National Exposition

Throughout the year, Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Ryerson runs a diverse portfolio of programs and initiatives to make a difference in our community.

These initiatives range from helping entrepreneurs launch their first business, to teaching at-risk youth how to open a savings account, to encouraging students to pursue an environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Competitions give our team the opportunity to showcase the impact we have each year. More importantly, it is an opportunity for our team to develop personally and professionally as we invest hundreds of hours crafting a presentation to “wow” the judges.

This year at the national exposition, SIFE Ryerson competed in the following categories:

• 2011 SIFE Financial Education Challenge
• 2011 TD SIFE Entrepreneurship Challenge
• 2011 SIFE National Competition

This Year’s Results

• SIFE Ryerson was Second Place for the 2011 SIFE Financial Education Challenge
• SIFE Ryerson was Second Place for the 2011 SIFE National Competition

* SIFE Ryerson’s 2011 TD SIFE Entrepreneurship Challenge team didn’t place but are recognized as the 2011 TD SIFE Entrepreneurship Regional Champions

Congratulations to SIFE Memorial University for being named the 2011 SIFE National Champions. As Team Canada, they advance to the 2011 SIFE World Cup hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia later this year.

Key Takeaways for SIFE Ryerson from the Competition

We are fortunate to earn awards and recognition for our impact but there are intangible benefits of being part of the competition that don’t necessarily show up on annual reports or press releases. Here are four key takeaways for our team:

Ability to Communicate

The professional communication is critical to succeeding in business. Whether it is the first time a member is presenting or the 4^th time, competitions push each individual outside of their comfort zone to craft creative scripts, develop professional PowerPoints, and present with a heart full of emotion each and every time.

Time Management

Each SIFE Ryerson member is heavily involved with programs and initiatives that interest them, keeping them busy throughout the year (yup, even the summer). But working 10+ hours a day for weeks requires a level of discipline, establishing priorities and saying no to activities that aren’t productive (sorry Mom! lol). Managing life with school can be a challenge, but competitions are a beast of their own.

Team Building

Working tirelessly day-in and day-out can get to you at times. But, with all the trials and tribulations each presentation teams faces, at the end of the day, we become closer as a team. This results in higher levels of productivity because you learn to trust each other and are comfortable making compromises to get things done. Bottom line, trust is everything.

Learn to Think Bigger

No one can teach you this; it’s something you can only experience. Seeing the success of your own team and seeing the success of each SIFE team across Canada, you can’t help but be inspired! Personally, it motivates me to push a little harder, work a little longer into the night and do everything in my control to make a meaningful impact.

A Big Thank You!

But SIFE Ryerson wouldn’t be able to accomplish what we have been able to do each year without the following people. A big thank you to:

Ryerson University for their unbelievable level of support throughout the year.

Strategic Partners for allowing us to operate impactful programs and initiatives.

ACE Canada for providing a platform for students to push beyond their comfort zones.

Family and friends for understanding that we are making sacrifices today for a happier and brighter future.

And our faculty advisor and our coach, Dr. Steven Gedeon for motivating us when we need it most.

As a team, we can’t wait until next year to come out even stronger!

Love,

SIFE Ryerson

Article written by Nehal Kazim.

Acts of greens doesn’t necessarily mean selling your car and walk! Simple everyday lifestyle decisions such as recycling and taking public transit can make a difference. Last year, the RU Green? Challenge resulted in over 53,900 acts, offsetting 7.3 metric tones of CO2. Which is the equivalent of planting 1253 trees! Little green changes can make a huge impact; together, we can make that difference!

Save Money

Being green can save ca$h. Acts like shutting off lights when they are not in use, taking cooler and quicker showers, using energy efficient light bulbs and turning down the heater by 2 degrees. All these acts not only help save the environment, it also help save your wallet too.

Making a Difference

Never underestimate the power of one. One CAN make a difference. Each one will inspire many others. Be that one!

Invite your friends to join you on your RU Green? Challenge. Tweet it, Facebook it, blog it and feel good doing it

Win Prizes

Being environmentally friendly will win you prizes. Prizes include a Blackberry smart phone and a Starbucks tumblers! So Grab your friends and make a difference!

Sign up to make a difference today!

Follow RU Green on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

SIFE RYERSON works to CAN hunger at Ryerson White Ribbon Campaign’s ”What Makes a Man’ Conference!

Ryerson University is asking everyone coming to the ‘What Makes a Man’ White Ribbon Conferenceor the ‘Behind the Masc’ keynote event at Ryerson University on Saturday February 12th to bring a canned food item for the Let’s CAN hunger drive. They will be giving away prizes for those who bring items (to add to the good feeling you get from giving!)

When: Saturday February 12th, 2010
Time: 10:30 – 3:30
Where: SCC115, Ryerson University, 55 Gould St.

Ryerson White Ribbon Campaign presents a discussion-focused conference looks at the spectrum of identities, experiences and realities that determine ‘What Makes a Man’. While the conference is almost full, everyone is welcome to attend the keynote event ‘Behind the Masc’ with Carlos Andrés Gómez

Date: Saturday February 12th, 2010
Time: 4:30pm
Where: SCC 115, Student Campus Centre. 55 Gould St.
Admission $10 or pay what you can – *All proceeds go to the White Ribbon Campaign.

PLEASE BRING A NON-PERISHABLE FOOD ITEM -Will be going to Ryerson Community Food Room

Visit http://whatmakesman.wordpress.com for more details!

BUSINESS PLAN WRITING TRAINING TRACK

The Business Plan Writing Seminar proudly presented by StartMeUp Ryerson will enable participants to understand and master the art of business plan by learning the elements and factors of what it takes to transform a business plan into a winning contract with investors and executives.

This workshop is highly recommended for students planning to enter the $25,000 Slaight Communications Business Plan Competition, and anyone who wishes to gain valuable knowledge as Dr. Dave Valliere will be discussing how to create a dynamic business plan.

Areas Covered:

-          Importance of a business plan and the components that make a up a successful one

-          What investors are looking for within the business plan

-          Tips for the $25 000 Slaight Communications Competition

Come join us for pizza and drinks as Dr. Dave Valliere, the Chair of the Entrepreneurship department at Ryerson, takes you get one step closer to entrepreneurial success!

This event is part of the StartMeUp Training Track and is mandatory to receive the StartMeUp Certificate of Completion.

Dr. Dave Valliere (BASc, MEng, PEng, MBA, PhD) joined the Entrepreneurship and Strategy area after a long and varied career in industry.  He has worked as a Professional Engineer, in IT management for a range of large and small companies, in commercial banking for several high-tech sectors, and as a venture capitalist in the software industry.  He has a Bachelor of Applied Science and Masters of Engineering from University of Toronto, an MBA from the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD from Open University (UK).  Dave is currently the Chair of the Entrepreneurship and Strategy Department at Ryerson University.