WEYERS CAVE - Members of Blue Ridge Community College's Students In Free Enterprise team are capping a banner year by having their picture displayed on the back of all Kellogg's Corn Flakes boxes on sale at Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs across the country.

The Blue Ridge SIFE team is being recognized for its national championship among two-year colleges in SIFE competition earlier this year.

SIFE is a program that helps students develop practical business skills and create economic opportunity for others locally, nationally and globally.

In the past couple of years, the Blue Ridge SIFE team has operated a successful on-campus coffee shop, assisted Gulf Coast businesses ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and began a lending program with Ethiopian women to help them start their own sheep business.

"We have quality projects not quantity,'' said Rebecca Evans, the Blue Ridge SIFE sponsor and a professor of business at the college.

Evans said part of the program's success has involved the commitment of both Shenandoah Valley residents and the Blue Ridge administration.

And, she said, the students' outreach to places such as Ethiopia is educational.

"They come to understand that anything that happens around the globe affects us,'' Evans said.

And there are occasions when the students must employ the art of persuasion to get project supplies.

"The students got Food Lion to donate ice cream for a project,'' she said.

SIFE team members value working together.

"You learn teamwork,'' said Ellen Wade, who holds an associate's degree in business from Blue Ridge, but is still taking classes at the college. "You go into areas you have never experienced.''

Freshman Genelle Smith said the diversity of the team is educational.

At various times, Evans said the Blue Ridge SIFE team has included students from as far away as Haiti and Vietnam.

This fall, the Blue Ridge SIFE team is going international in its outreach again.

The team is helping people in Haiti start a rabbit cooperative.

Evans said the venture will provide both a source of food and economic opportunity.

The project will be especially challenging for Blue Ridge student Tommy Morris.

"He is working on video tutorials for the Haitians about record-keeping,'' Evans said.

According to Fortune Magazine, SIFE is attracting more than 36,000 participants across the country and has gotten the attention of more than 250 leading corporations.