LEONIA DECA: MAKING DIFFERENCES

Leonia High School DECA members Megan Chacon-Diaz and Tony Bonadies are the chapter managers of this year’s Community Service, which focuses on a small, unique community within Leonia High School itself. This community is the Multiple Disabled students. The chapter managers, along with the entire Leonia DECA chapter, are teaching invaluable employment skills, specifically related to retail situations. The Leonia DECA chapter members have a wide variety of expertise and skills and the chapter sees this as their service to share this knowledge and skills to better the lives of others that are less fortunate.

The Multiple Disabled students are using these newly developed skills while they work in the Supplyin’ Lion, Leonia High School’s school store. The Multiple Disabled students have made a huge presence within the store and are progressing everyday.

This project has one simple purpose: to help these students develop job and people skills they can use for life. This community service project serves to train students for post-graduation entry-level retail jobs and to expose them to typical job responsibilities and situations. This project aims to ease the transition from school to work and independent living. It is necessary for the students to receive thorough preparation for life after high school.

The result of this project will be an intangible impact on the lives of these Multiple Disabled students, allowing them to use what they learned throughout the year in order to maximize their opportunities for a bright future.

For more information about this project feel free to contact Rowena Gianfredi, the Leonia DECA advisor at [email protected].