October, it’s the month of breast cancer awareness and at Arlington High School it’s the time where DECA has their Lemonade challenge. The Lemonade challenge is where teams put together in DECA go head to head to raise money for a charity of their choice.

In this challenge the teams are made up of students from grades 9 to 12. Tyler Payne is the teacher and advisor for this challenge. Payne explained that this challenge was a good example of a real word situation, “because there’s project managers and those project managers get to experience how employees act. Communication is also a key component to this challenge as well as getting out of their comfort zone.”

The winning team of the competition takes all the money collected from each team and donates to the winning team’s charity. The winning team this year was fourth period, who raised close to $18,000 for Wings of Hope which is helping out the victims down in Puerto Rico.

Ashley Brazell, a sophomore from the winning team, gave some advice to the teams who lost for next year; she said to “create strong personal connections. Go and join other clubs and get to know people that way you can get people to donate to your team.”

Alex Baldwin, a freshman member of a different team, was kind of upset that her team lost, but was fine with the money going to Wings of Hope “Because it;s still going towards a good cause. They definitely need it down in Puerto Rico.”  

Alex believes her team still did very well because they spread the word on social media about them selling lemonade and then on their day they talked on the mic and went into the crowd to get donations from people.

“Our charity we chose was Wounded Warriors, just because people on our team had parents or family members who were in that charity. Just to see so many people support and help us out by buying and donating it made us happy.” Alex and her team were really thankful for the donations and money they raise, even if they didn’t win they were happy at least knowing the money would still be helping out people.