by Suzane Jlelati and Tejas Chadha, Staff Writers
Late January in Bakersfield, Fountain Valley High School’s Virtual Enterprise team Off The Grid went to the California State Virtual Enterprise Competition and placed in seven different categories and placed top five in business planning, allowing them to move on to Nationals held in New York. They are the first team to place in the top five at state in the Huntington Beach Union High School District.
Virtual Enterprise is a class where the students create a business, apply for jobs and once the business is made, they face against other schools in the state, country and the world in competitions on different aspects of business such as human resources and business planning.
The students on Virtual Enterprise have delegated certain jobs and responsibilities between themselves. The Chief Executive Officedr (CEO), Katherine Chau (’17) is in charge of overseeing of their strategies and business for each trade show they attend.
“As a group we attend different competitions in which a lot of the Virtual Enterprise firms around California and America get together and present their products companies and try to sell their ideas to students and judges,” said Chau.
This years business is called Off The Grid which is a kinetic energy clothing company which make adapters that harness the kinetic energy woven into the material of the clothes as the person wearing the clothing item moves and it charges devices.
“No one in the district has ever placed that high, so you have to be top six to make it into nationals, so we barely made it in, ” said Virtual Enterprise teacher Sarah McCance about the recent competition and the work the class put in for this win.
Nationals will be held from April 2-6 but in the meantime, the team will be participating on other competitions such as the Trade Fair in Pasadena in addition to other different online competitions.
“For our class who doesn’t really have their own classroom and has never done his before, this win is super impressive. For them to start from scratch and beat other schools who [used the same company] two years in a row, it’s amazing,” said McCance.
“We were lucky enough to be top six and hopefully we will be able to go to New York and compete there,” said Director of Sales Justin Nguyen (’17) said.
To help the team fly over to New York, there is a GoFundMe account, fundraising at Raising Cane’s and Tio Flaco’s and they are also willing to take donations. The goal is to raise enough money to send nine students and two chaperones so they can continue competing and displaying their abilities.
