DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) is a national club that encourages the development of leadership and business skills. In this club, one of the most important events is competition. The district competition went great and DECA had quite a few winners.

Phillip Khaskin, the president of DECA here at charter, competed and qualified for states. Phillip competed in a group with student, Matthew Carter and Cristian Escalona, VP of operations.

“We put together a career seminar for underprivileged individuals from Broward Partnership. We had speakers talk about perseverance,  resume building, professional attire, interview etiquette, and job services available to the clients,” said Khaskin. Broward Partnership is a homeless shelter, so this seminar will help those living in this center get back on their feet. This project placed well in DECA districts.

Maliha Mahmud, Executive VP of marketing , Aliza Khalil, VP of marketing, and Aryanna Hyppolite, key club president, competed in the financial literacy section. “The ‘Making Sense of your Cents’ campaign was created to educate high school students the importance of financial literacy. We held workshops to teach knowledge to our student body including management of money, stock investment, establishing credit, and resume building,” said Mahmud.

Freshman, Gianna Weingard and Riley Floyd made it to states on their first project. “So for our project we did an integrated marketing campaign for an event; basically, what that means is that we made a 40-day plan for how the event would be marketed through digital (social media) and physical (flyers) advertising. Essentially, our goal was to make a plan to effectively market an event so it would gain relevance and be successful,” said Weingard.

Alana Browne, junior class treasurer, and Jessica Camacho, competed in the business growth plan category. “Me and Jessica Camacho are doing a business growth plan on my business Pacific Sky Jewelry. We created a 5 year development plan and put together our strengths, opportunities, risks and weaknesses with the goal to increase sales and profit over the years,” said Browne.

Ashlee Diaz, VP of Membership, wrote a paper solo. “I did a 20-page paper on a Franchise Business Plan involving the development of a business plan proposal to buy into an existing franchise. The franchise I chose is ChemStation. ChemStation offers custom-made cleaning chemicals to industrial businesses along with refillable container system to store the chemicals. This refillable tank system prevents millions of cleaning chemicals entering the landfills each year. These cleaning chemicals are environmentally friendly because they are biodegradable. They serve industries such as food processing, automotive, and transportation. ChemStation has worked hard to build its strong reputation for quality products and unique services, which is why I chose to do my franchise business plan on this amazing company,” said Diaz.

Nicholas Pappalardo and Thomas Viletstra collaborated on a business  solutions project. “For our project we chose buisness solutions. Custom Wheels Inc had an issue of lack of employment, we (Nick and Thomas) fixed this issue. The project consists of advertising the business opportunity online, mainly through social media. As this is anew approach for the business, we (Nick and Thomas) took care of the hiring, interviewing and advertising for the business.”

Students that attended states excelled. They had a mix of business and fun, such as karaoke. Congrats to Alana Browne and Jessica Camacho for placing 3rd in the Business Growth Plan category. Aryanna Hyppolite, Aliza Khalid and Maliha Mahmud placed third for Financial Literacy.