About:

Phi Beta Lambda - PBL

Future Business Leaders of America-Phi Beta Lambda is a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) education association of students preparing for careers in business and business-related fields.

• FBLA for high school students
• FBLA Middle Level for junior high, middle and intermediate school students
• PBL for postsecondary students
• And the Professional Alumni Division for business people, educators and parents, who support the goals of the Association.

The FBLA-PBL Mission is to bring business and education together in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership and career development programs. FBLA-PBL is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, and organized on local, state and national levels. Business teachers/advisers and advisory councils (including school officials, business people and community representatives) guide local chapters. State advisers and committee members coordinate chapter activities for the national organization.

Click here for more information.

Students In Free Enterprise - SIFE

SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) is a global non-profit organization active in over 40 countries and territories. SIFE is funded by financial contributions from corporations, entrepreneurs, foundations, government agencies and individuals. Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE establishes student teams on university campuses. These teams are led by faculty advisors and they are challenged to develop community outreach projects that reach SIFE's four educational topics:

• Market Economics
• Entrepreneurship
• Personal Financial Success Skills
• Business Ethics

SIFE Team members leverage their personal educational experiences, the expertise of their faculty advisors, the support of their local business advisory boards and the resources of their institutions to implement programs that create real economic opportunities for members of their communities. The effectiveness of their programs judged at competition. Each national SIFE organization conducts a national competition, which is judged by leaders from its business community. At competition, SIFE Teams present the results of their educational outreach projects and compete to determine which team was most successful at creating economic opportunity for others. SIFE National Champion Teams advance to the top level of competition, the SIFE World Cup.

Our Mission

The Mission of our SIFE/PBL Team is to design and implement programs in our community to change the life of our residents; one individual at a time, transforming our community and generations of residents to come by teaching them financial literacy skills, improving their money management, motivating them to succeed in not only the local marketplace but global as well. We want to bring the world to the youth in our community who might be financially challenged in being able to see it otherwise and let them know that they can go beyond Tazewell County and there are not financial restrictions they cannot overcome.

Aren't SIFE and PBL two completely different organizations?

Because of our (Bluefield College's) small size we believed it would be beneficial to combine SIFE with Phi Beta Lambda (PBL) as one Organization.

Who can join?

Anyone interested in either orginiazation may join and participate. All business students are already members of SIFE. You need only register an account at sife.org. There are fees associated with joing PBL however. For more information please join us at our regular meeting time (see the Events page).