Hi Florida DECA!
The month of February is already here and time has really flown by! States is in a month and it’s already time for the ABP to be submitted.

When submitting your Annual Business Plan there’s certain things you have to have done. For example a cover page letting us know what Level your Chapter is hoping to reach, whether it be gold, silver, or bronze.

Make sure to read the ABP on the FL DECA website to make sure you’re not missing anything and have everything you’ve done over the past year in detail! Turn in your Annual Business Plan to team60@fldeca.org and do it no later then February 5th, 2018.

It’s going to be very exciting to see how hard you’ve all worked on the ABP and how great your Chapters are, and I can’t wait to see who gets recognized at CDC!
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please reach out! I’m here for you.
Email: christina@fldeca.org
Twitter: @DECA_Delgado

Hi Florida DECA!
This month I’m talking about competition. I think competition preparation and studying goes outside of DECA season, and can begin as early as the summer if need be.
      For manuals and other DECA paper I think those are the events and competitions where people need the best time management skills. These competitions have to a lot of research done beforehand and have to be thoroughly planned out, in regards to when what in the manual or paper is being written and by who and what information you need.
     As for Team Decision Making and Individual Series competitions, studying resources can be found all over the internet for these. You can start with DECA and DECA Direct and the resources those provide you and if not you can do your own research for studying and look at mock role plays or old previous DECA exams to study.
     REPETITION IS KEY, and by repeatedly studying and doing practice exams you’ll be able to find your weak and strong points and you’ll be able to better study and better compete.
    Another great resource is Competition University! This has tons of DECA vocabulary and practice exams for you to take and you can also look at previous roleplays and practice their performance indicators. But this study tool is an invest! Speak to your advisor about possibly using this as a chapter.
     Another way to prepare for competition would maybe be study groups where you could quiz yourself and test your knowledge and get constructive criticism as to where you need to improve as a competitor.
     Just study hard, try your best, and don’t psych yourself out! Everything will fall into place if you do these things and you’ll compete as best as you should.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please reach out! I’m here for you.
Email: christina@fldeca.org
Twitter: @DECA_Delgado

Chapter Spotlight: Stoneman Douglas DECA
Here are all the quick facts that I spoke about in my vlog, their accomplishments speak for themselves! There’s no way to describe how awesome this chapter is. Their hard work and effort doesn’t ever go unnoticed and Florida DECA is proud to have them as a Chapter and to represent them.
    •       Officer team of 36 officers: 2 Co-Presidents, 13 executives and 23 directors
    •       Advisors: Mr. Albert, Mrs. Webster, Mrs. Cutler (who we appreciate and love for their endless dedication to our chapter each and every year)
    •       5th largest chapter in the world: Over 600 members, 55 professional members, and 30 alumni
    •       130 to states, 30+ to states (record of 57 to last year’s ICDC)
    •       Yearly Events:
                ◦       Shark Tank: Every year we hold our own shark tank simulation at school and invite business partners to become “sharks” to help prepare our students for competition
                ◦       Role Play nights: Right before states competition, we invite our business partners and members of the community to come and help judge and prepare our students for competition
                ◦       DECA Socials: Our monthly meetings for our members consist of themed activities that promote teamwork, creativity, and creativity. During holidays, we make sure to have activities in those themes, and we also use our socials as opportunities to promote our chapter projects! We are holding a Zumbathon at our next DECA Social with a donation drive in spirit of the Holiday season.
                ◦       Networking Event: Every year, we invite our local chamber of commerce members to our school and host a networking event where our DECA members learn the key aspects of networking and then get to apply them as they meet new business professionals from our community.
    •       Three 2017-2018 Chapter Projects:
                ◦       Community Service: Voices for Venezuela
                ◦       Public Relations: Sea la Vie
                ◦       Entrepreneurship Promotion: CEO
    •       Past Chapter Projects:
                ◦       Marketing in the Middle: We began a DECA chapter at our local middle school, which is currently still in place today and even has their own officer team!
                ◦       Start Fresh: We started a garden at our school in which we promoted efficient conservation techniques for planting, and emphasized the importance of environmental sustainability within businesses and elementary schools nearby
                ◦       Project Giveaway: We rose awareness for the homeless through a series of events that incorporated our members in ways that they could assist the homeless. Our most popular event was our PB & J making, which we did 4 times throughout the year and resulted in over 3,500 sandwiches being made for donation towards the Broward Outreach Center
It was really fun to work with this Chapter and I always enjoy speaking with them and spending time with them. The members of this chapter are the type that make you want to keep you DECA friends forever. I’m so happy to have made this about them and if you ever want to learn more about them, take a look at their twitter! @MSD_DECA
If you have any questions or concerns please reach out! I’m here to help YOU.
Email: christina@fldeca.org
Twitter @DECA_Delgado

Hey guys! This month my vlog was about an Advisor Spotlight. When thinking about who I was going to do this on, I wanted to do this on someone who’s been with Florida DECA for quite some time now.
 
Mrs. Carter has been with Spanish River for quite some time, about 13 years, the same amount of time she’s been doing DECA. Her efforts have shown through the years, when she first started out, Spanish River DECA only had 200 members and now they’re at an incredible 950 members. In the beginning Spanish River only used to take a few amount of students to CDC and now they take around 250 members to the State conference and around 50 to 60 to Internationals. She’s put in a lot of hard work and time into Florida DECA and she cares about her students.

Mrs. Carter has made a lasting impact on Spanish River DECA, and she’s had some incredible experiences with her students. She’s been turning over her DECA program to her new advisors, and she’s stepping down her position and mentoring but she will definitely miss her kids. I think it’s safe to say that Mrs. Carter’s kids will miss her as well.
THANK YOU TO SPANISH RIVER DECA FOR HELPING OUT WITH THIS VIDEO.
 If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please reach out! I’m here to help. :) Email: christina@fldeca.org Twitter: @DECA_Delgado

Hey Florida DECA!

As an overview of the Annual Business Plan, Team 60’s program of work, we definitely integrated the Guiding Principles of DECA, academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible, & experienced leaders. From this it’s broken up into the comprehensive learning program, DECA Integrates into Classroom Instruction, Applies Learning, Connects to Business, Promotes Competition & the Core Values of Competence, Innovation, Integrity, & Teamwork.
 
For Professionally Responsible, just as the other sections, there are different activities to complete, such as submitting two chapter chatter articles, hosting professional member to speak to your chapter, touring a business, and others. Also, the ABP ties into DECA Inc. Chapter Campaigns, such as the promotional and advocacy campaigns for the Professionally Responsible section and Team 60 is really pushing for Florida Chapters to participate in Chapter Campaigns and accomplish Thrive Level, so through including them in the ABP it’s like killing two birds with one stone!
 
Although, we do give chapters a lot of freedom with the ABP being menu style and them being able to pick and choose which activities to do, we do have a couple of mandatory activities. For Professionally Responsible, the mandatory activity is to raise funds for dollars for scholars, chapters must donate one additional dollar per member and to complete this for the ABP they must include a picture of the check.
 
In regards to submission, you can submit the ABP via email to team60@fldeca.org no later than February 5th 2018. An important tip to be successful when participating in the Annual Business Plan is keep detailed descriptions, photos, emails, testimonials, and etc as evidence of completion.
 
As for this month, I think this sums it up. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please reach out to me!
Email: christina@fldeca.org
Twitter: @DECA_Delgado

Howdy Florida DECA! This month I’m talking to you about Experienced Leaders.
            Experienced Leaders is one of the Guiding Principles of DECA; academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible, and experienced leaders. As our mission statement says, DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe.
            On a different subject DECA is a CTE. CTE is the largest national education association dedicated to the advancement of education that prepares youth and adults for careers, and their mission, in a way making one of DECA’s missions, is to provide educational leadership in developing a competitive workforce.
            DECA helps prepare our student members for college and careers along with other things in the real world through things such as competition. We have a variety of competitions that could potentially help our members choose which career field they decide to pursue, such as marketing, hospitality, business law, etc. It also teaches things such financial literacy and networking.
            Along with the beneficial skills this association teaches you through competition, DECA provides lots of resources for chapters and members that can teach them other essentials to life and the business world such as fundraising, budgeting, how to plan, and  how to collaborate and how to improve on collaborating. Tips and other useful articles are sent into another useful resource, DECA direct on things such as advocacy, how to be a leader, etc. All of these things that we teach you could be applicable to the real world, outside of high school and DECA.
            On top of all of that, DECA does actually provide these experiences. We have these employment and internship partnerships, these partners even actually go ahead and engage with some of our members to provide them with a job or an internship either while they’re still in high school or after. Thus helping build up our DECA member’s experiences and making them Experienced Leaders.
 
The Employment and Internship Partnerships of DECA can be found at https://www.deca.org/partner/partners/#  if you want to find out anymore information.
 
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or simply just want to chat, please feel free to contact me! I’m here to help you.
Email: christina@fldeca.org
Twitter: @DECA_Delgado

​Howdy Florida DECA!
 So this month, I’m doing a Chapter Spotlight on District 10’s very own, Hialeah High DECA!
 Hialeah High DECA is located in Hialeah, Florida where the cafécito is as strong as the membership, and the plantanitos are as sweet as the family love in this chapter. HHS DECA has an awesome leadership team of 8 officers and their advisors are the amazing, Mr. Kenneth D'Amour and Mr. Quintero!
 HHS DECA has some fun events such as DECA Day with the Miami Marlins, their very own Hialeah High End of the Year DECA Picnic, and MDA Camp. They also participated in a 5K this past year for education! Through community service events such as these, Hialeah High DECA exemplified one of DECA’s core values of becoming Community Oriented! HHS DECA also has an academy of Business Entrepreneurship, in which it consists of three classes where members must excel in all of them to complete the academy.
 Hialeah High DECA has a rather small chapter of about 180 members. Although, over the past 8 to 9 years they’ve had several people qualify for CDC and a lucky amount qualify for ICDC.
 I want to congratulate HHS DECA for all of their successes over the years and wish them the best of luck in their future; their possibilities are LIMITLESS when they own their futures!
 If you’d like to keep up with what they’re doing their social media is..
Twitter: @HIALEAHDECA
INSTAGRAM: @HHSDECA
SNAPCHAT: HHSDECA
 If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or simply just want to chat, please contact me!
Twitter: @DECA_Delgado
Email: christina@fldeca.org
Snapchat: christydelgadoo

​Hey Florida DECA!
 It’s Christina, and this month I’ll be talking about the topic of Academically Prepared.
 So, when we talk about Academically Prepared, we mean a few things. For example, DECA members are ambitious, high - achieving leaders who are equipped to face any of the challenges of their aspirations. Also, being Academically Prepared does a few things, such as DECA integrating into classroom instruction, DECA applies learnings, DECA connects to business, and DECA promotes competition.
 Although, when you think about being Academically Prepared, you may simply think of competitions and preparation for those, there’s so much more to it. For example, DECA really does integrate into the classroom. Thanks to DECA, in my classes at my school I learned different things, such as how to run a business and the principles of entrepreneurship. I’ve also learned the different aspects of finance and hospitality as well. As for applies to learning, through the DECA classes offered at my school, I’ve had the opportunity to learn programs such as Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and others; I’ve even been certified in these programs! Moving on to connects to business, because of DECA, I have a pretty impressive resume and that’s something anyone can obtain simply by joining this association and becoming involved. I’ve learned how to truly work well on a team and how to be a better leader. I’ve also learned how to face different challenges in different & more efficient ways and I’ve gained awesome experiences, such as being a Charted Association Officer, that is surely a quality point on my resume and will look great on college & job applications.
 Finally, DECA really does carry on into the real world. A good amount of the things you learn through this association you see in things such as the work force and when you have to deal with people. DECA and all things that come with it and everything you earn from it is more than just a part of the high school and collegiate levels. These are things that could very well last forever and shape you as an individual.
 If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or simply just want to chat, please contact me!
 Email: christina@fldeca.org
Twitter: @DECA_Delgado