That's the spirit: Reutlingen SIFE team wins 2 awards at the National Cup

[Translate to Englisch:] Das Reutlinger SIFE-Team freut sich über die gewonnenen Preise: (von links) Filip Schaffitzel, Lena Rübelmann, Justus Gutte, Jacqueline Vater, Felix Brinkmann, Leila Darwich und Christian Fritz.

On 5 and 6 May 2011, the Reutlingen SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) team participated in the SIFE National Cup in Bonn – and won.

Having had some time to get to know each other on the first day, on the second day 25 teams from all over Germany presented their projects to company representatives of Deutsche Telekom, the event’s sponsor, and the audience.  The aim of the projects was to approach social, economic and ecological problems and to support those affected by them.

The project presented by the Reutlingen team was “DaCapo”. It is based on the idea of helping permanently unemployed people to re-enter the job market. The team cooperates with second hand store DaCapo in Reutlingen, a company dedicated to public utility, which employs permanently unemployed persons for one year. The team is trying to improve the reintegration into the job market by for example offering training seminars for the unemployed. On the other hand, the team wants to increase DaCapo’s popularity in Reutlingen and help to improve the company’s internal structures. The team is working in close cooperation with DaCapo’s managing director, Christoph Kauffmann. Further projects of the Reutlingen SIFE-team are Hupjefi, a social center for young women in Cameroon and Manufaktur Talentreif, a concept for helping older people to stay active and maintain social contacts.

The team proved successful in two categories, winning the SIFE Spirit Award and the Recruiting Award – and, looking back, says: “the intense and exhausting preparations for the National Cup have really been worth all the work, because we had a lot of fun and we actually won! With this result we can start proudly and contentedly into our next project phase.”