With the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) coming up, a team of DECA members, Sahil Shah ‘21, Joshua Robert ‘21, and Swapnil Dash ‘21, organized a Way to Wealth seminar as a part of their campaign to promote financial literacy. It was held in the lecture hall during lunch on Friday, April 12 with a goal of encouraging students to strive for more knowledge about financial interactions. As a result, many students came ready to  gain knowledge about money-managing skills such as insurance, taxes, and income.

“[The lack of] financial literacy is an extremely large problem in our community, and it starts from public schools not teaching it [to students] at a young age. Because of this, we wanted to specifically target audiences within schools so that they could get a potential head start,” Robert said. “Overall, we were thrilled with the turnout and the opportunity we had to share. We received a lot of support, and the experience gathered at this seminar will aid each of us in future endeavors for our campaign in DECA.”

The team’s purpose for the seminar came from an essay prompt that they received at their last DECA competition, which was to write a report about how they communicated the benefits of financial literacy to others. This inspired them to educate as many people about financial literacy as they could in the community.

“Our goal with our campaign is to impact such a large number of people and a wide range of types of people that the judges at our DECA International competition are impressed; so impressed in fact that we get up on the stage with not only the trophy, but the knowledge of good marketing skills and the satisfaction of helping people prepare for their future,” Shah said.

Approximately 50 students attended the presentation, and they learned many financial skills that would help them in the future.

“I thought [the seminar] was very informative and it opened my eyes to something I had never truly considered before,” Vikram Joshi ‘21 said. “I think that [the team] did an amazing job and I am glad that people in our school are taking the initiative to do such wonderful things.”

The team hopes to be well-prepared for ICDC which will be held from Saturday, April 27 to Wednesday, May 1 in Orlando, Florida.