On April 22, Redmond High School (RHS) DECA students will be holding a spring market and silent auction to raise money to attend the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Orlando, Fla. later this month.
The 17 students will travel to the Sunshine State on April 28 and stay until May 4. They will be among more than 13,000 of their high school peers participating in individual and team competitions focusing on entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, hospitality and management.
Grace Brady, one of the advisers, said Washington state has one of the strongest DECA programs in the country. The RHS students competing at the conference are seniors Joey Costello, Sam Notarriani, Brittany Montag, Peyton Halstead, Jackie Gaherity, Kelly Weiss, Charlie Mroz, Caroline Armijo, Erin Windham, Logan Dougherty, Maddy Harrison, Paul Cretu and Myeka Powers and juniors Ashlyn Trussel, Katie Morris and Bri Dankberg. Sophomore Everett Boker will be traveling to Orlando as well to attend a leadership academy.
But representing their school at the competition is not free. Weiss said the cost per student — which includes airfare, hotel stay and competition entry fee — is about $1,200. Profits from the market and auction next week, which will be from 5 to 9 p.m. in the RHS gym at 17272 N.E. 104th, will go toward offsetting this cost.
The students qualified for ICDC by placing at the State Career Development Conference in early March and since then, they have been working to acquire items for the silent auction. Each student is responsible for bringing in at least four items.
“The more to auction off, the better,” said Armijo.
Auction items will include timeshare stays, artwork, jewelry and tee times at local golf clubs. The students will be accepting items until April 19.
Weiss said half of the gym will also be turned into a market, similar to an open market such as the Redmond Saturday Market, featuring local vendors selling a variety of goods. Their goal is to get about 50 vendors.
While DECA has held events like this before, it was before Weiss and Armijo’s time. As rookies in event planning, they have found the past few weeks to be quite the challenge.
“It’s definitely very stressful, especially since we have such a big time crunch,” Weiss said.
This being said, the students are not letting the stress get to them too much. They are using the market and auction as an opportunity to learn about planning and organizing large events.
“It’s fun though,” Armijo said. “It’s a good experience to have for future times.”
They have also had a few car washes to raise money for ICDC and hope to have at least one more before the competition, weather permitting.
DECA also has a flocking fundraiser, which entails covering someone’s front yard with plastic flamingos. That person then can pay to have the flock “migrate” to someone else’s yard, and so on and so forth. Armijo said people can purchase “anti-flocking insurance” if they don’t want to be flocked as well.
In addition to raising money for ICDC, the students have also been perfecting their projects for the competition. The competitions vary in topics, ranging from Creative Marketing and Sports and Entertainment to Accounting Applications and Hospitality. The competitions will be in two formats: written or presentation based.
Armijo and Weiss are part of a trio that will be competing in the presentation-based Creative Marketing Project category in Orlando. The third member of the group is Mroz. They will be entering the competition as state champions for their project on Northwest company, Eddie Bauer.
Last week the trio took their project and presented it to company executives as a practice run for ICDC. In addition to receiving feedback, Armijo, Weiss and Mroz each received $500 travel scholarships to go toward their personal competition funds and a jacket from the company’s mountain outerwear line, First Ascent.
For further practice, the trio also took their presentation to the LWSD office in Redmond Town Center. They presented in front of district officials, including superintendent Chip Kimball.
Brady said students are allowed to tweak and make minor changes to their projects before the competition, but they are not allowed to do any more research.
She said she has enjoyed seeing her students work on their projects and various fundraising endeavors and grow from the experiences.
“They take ownership of their work, which is something to see,” Brady said.
To learn more about donating items, email s-bdankberg@lwsd.org. To learn more about participating in the fundraising market, email s-katmorris@lwsd.org.
