Populate a Dropdown in MVC

Scenario- How to develop a reusable component to populate all dropdowns in MVC applications.

Design-
Repository class - LookupRepository.cs that will fetch lookup values from DB.
Static Extension class - LookupExtension.cs will have method that will extend Dictionary object and return list of SelectListItems.
Static Helper class - LookupHelper.cs will call the repository, cast the result to list of SelectListItems and build SelectList.

Model class

 public class Sample
 {
    public int Country {get; set;}
    public SelectList Countries {get; set;}
 }

Controller code

 public ActionResult Index()
 {
    var model = new Sample();
    model.Countries = LookupHelper.Countries;
    return View(model);
 }

Index.chtml code

        @model Sample
        @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.Country, Model.Counties, new { @style = "width:86%" })

LookupHelper.cs

 public static SelectList Counties
 {
    get
    {
       return new SelectList(_lookupRepository.Countries.ToSelectListItems(), "Text", "Value");
    }
 }

LookupExtensions

 public static IEnumerable ToSelectListItems(this IDictionary items, string selected = "1")
 {
   return items.Select(k =>
              new SelectListItem
              {
                      Selected = (k.Value == selected),
                      Text = k.Key,
                      Value = k.Value
              });
 }