Team 54 President, Daniela Rey of Cypress Bay High School, dreamed that Florida DECA could Aspire Higher and do more for the community. Her team proposed a clothing drive at our fall Leadership Training Conference.
The request was simple; bring clothing to the conference to donate to a local charity. Well after counting thousands of garments we knew we had done something good. Items were donated to the Salvation Army of Orlando. Helping Hands by Florida DECA was born!
Team 55 took Helping Hands a step further. They choose a "charity of the year" to receive items from an LTC and CDC collection. Families in Transition of Seminole County was chosen do to the over 1900 homeless children in their county. Team 55 decided to continue the clothing drive at the fall LTC and collected over 10,000 pieces of clothing.
The CDC collection would be a non-perishable food product. The team debated and chose macaroni and cheese boxes. They also wanted to make the competition more exciting for chapters by creating a traveling plaque for each collection. The macaroni and cheese collection was a huge success with over 16,000 boxes collected. Vice President Erica Mick was also every excited to build a castle out of the boxes to be displayed at CDC. Many chapters took pictures of the massive display. In addition, Vice President Zack Schaja of Team 55 networked and got a donation from Kraft Foods in the amount of $5000 for Families in Transition!
