More than 200 students from a variety of vocational schools and regular high schools from District 7 Northeast PA DECA attended a competition recently at Memorial Hall in Jim Thorpe.

DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe.Founded in 1946, with more than a 60 year history, DECA has touched the lives of more than ten million students, educators, school administrators and business professionals.DECA's programs and activities have constantly evolved using the latest technology and cutting edge educational research.Its student members leverage their DECA experience to become academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible, experienced leaders.The event at Memorial Hall was a District competition with more than eight counties represented where students were given real-life business scenarios that they were not familiar with and they were asked how to best manage them.They had 15 minutes to prepare a case study and then "role play" with a judge who was a local business or industry person and present their solutions to problems to the best of their ability.Students also had taken a 100 question multiple choice test in their area and winners were chosen based on their test score and their role play score combined.The top six individual students will move on to the state conference in Hershey in February and the top four teams will move on also.Students not only win trophies at these competitions, they can also win scholarships.DECA gives away over one million dollars in scholarships to students each year.