We don’t always get around to blogging in the midst of some of our busier times of the year… but wanted to do a Throwback Thursday to recap last year’s hard working DECA Campaign Team!

The following was originally written by Senior Marketing + DECA member, Jessie M with some edits by Mrs G. We miss you dearly Jess!

With the 2022-2023 school year being the first for Mrs. Gellenbeck as Orange’s DECA Advisor, it came with a lot of new adventures. The program grew with new students and different competitive events. Although the entire chapter helped organize some of the following campaign activities, Sierra, Jessica & Erika helped complete Orange High Schools’ very first DECA chapter campaign! Let’s chat about it!

The girls started planning in early September with an after school meeting which of course, included Starbucks and lots of creative brainstorming. We met monthly to plan, gather ideas and evidence to later submit for the campaign due on Dec 1.

The Community Service Campaign consists of an action plan with subcategories of a community service activity, 75% member participation, and a form of publicity/promotion. We chose to write and create holiday letters to a local hospital, Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio in hopes of brightening spirits and wishing a happy holiday season. We decided to have our members participate by choosing a day to strictly make the cards. Our form of publicity was posted through Instagram, and again, in hopes of spreading joy during the holiday season. 

Our second campaign was Promotional Campaign. This one was more lengthy and consisted of more goals. The subcategories were 3 School Outreach Activities, 3 Alumni Success Stories, and 3 Community Outreach Activities. 

Three School Outreach Activities

• School news commercial showing off our school store’s beginning of remodel and advertising that we were open for the school year. We promoted this on our Instagram and The Juice, our school news. 
• Worked volunteer hours in Fort Orange for Curriculum Night where we promoted it through signs within the school to direct parents.
• T-shirt Raffle within Fort Orange. For this, we promoted it through a commercial on school news as well as Instagram.

Three Alumni Success Stories

• For this subcategory, Sierra, Jessie, and Erika each chose an alumni of various ages and placed and interviewed them as a catch-up and where they are now. They took their interviews and made a reflection post on each one! Not to be biased, but they were super cool!
• The former members the girls interviewed were…
  • Maggie Debolt
  • Maddie Simmons
  • Milana Yarbrough 
• You can check out these interviews on our blog! *wink wink*

Three Community Outreach Activities

• A common activity we set up was football and basketball pop-up shops. First, we designed and produced or outsourced new merch every month or season. We then promoted our pop-ups through signs, Instagram, and word-of-mouth. At the football games, we would set up an hour before the gates open, then once they did parents were able to shop our merch to show their spirit for Orange, while supporting our DECA program.

• We were able to bring in former Hot Chicken Takeover owner and founder, Joe DeLoss, to talk with our business & marketing students! He spoke about every step in his process from start up, product testing his food to selling all of his business. He was such a kind soul and even answered our entrepresNEERS questions about how to be successful in business! 

• Our final activity was getting a DECA Proclamation signed by the Delaware County Commissioner’s Office. We went at eight ‘o clock in the morning where Sierra led us in presenting our program and proclamation to declare November DECA month!

The tasks were almost fully completed by late November. The submission deadline was December 1st and the planning team stayed after school to submit all the evidence. Then the waiting game took place… would they be approved and invited to the THRIVE Leadership Academy at ICDC?

The answer was YES!

Eleven students of our chapter attended DECA’s International Career Development Conference (ICDC), three of them being Junior Sierra T, Senior Jessica M, and Senior Erika B to accept the Chapter Campaign award. We highly recommend the DECA Chapter Campaign process to future DECA members, especially those at OOHS. It was a fun way to work together, promote our chapter… and finally, earn the reward of attending ICDC in Orlando, FL where we made a ton of lifelong memories!