UPEI Students Showcased as Part of ACE Anniversary Celebrations
Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE) is celebrating its 20th anniversary of teaching and igniting young Canadians to create brighter futures for themselves and their communities. As part of its anniversary celebration, the organization is releasing 20 stories about student teams and entrepreneurs involved with ACE who are making an impact on their communities while still attending university or college. The University of Prince Edward Island team is one of them.
The SIFE Team at UPEI has rolled out an exciting new initiative called Project NAFTA, in partnership with other student teams in the US and Mexico. The goal is to learn about foreign trade within the North American Free Trade Agreement countries through simulation. The student groups in each country have selected a local entrepreneur from whom they purchase products that they then ship to the other student groups. This project is an original approach to learning about foreign trade and helping local entrepreneurs learn the fundamentals of exporting.
Kristi Kelly is the UPEI project leader. "We were interested in learning about international trade, so what better way to learn then by actually trying it?" she says. "It is a lot of hard work, and we had no idea how costly or complicated international trade could really be."
The project is just one of many that the UPEI team will be presenting as part of ACE competitions regionally and nationally this year. ACE is holding three Regional Expositions (Calgary: March 1 to 2; Halifax: March 8 to 9; and Ottawa: March 15 to 16) and one National Exposition (Toronto: May 7 to 9) where student teams and student entrepreneurs will showcase their projects and businesses and be judged by top Canadian executives. These four events are expected to attract more than 1500 students, faculty, alumni, top executives and leading entrepreneurs.
To read more 20th year stories, or for detailed information on all ACE Expositions taking place in 2007, please visit www.ace20.ca.
