Nearly 4,000 Ontario teens are gaining real-world business expertise after school as members of DECA, an association of marketing and business students that pits young people against tough business challenges while building leadership skills.

The co-curricular program works with high school business and marketing classes to deliver lasting skills that reach beyond textbook memorization. DECA's menu of offerings includes leadership conferences, contests that have students write 30-page business plans and live competitions that draw members together internationally to solve real-life business problems submitted by members of industry.

Currently, more than 80 Ontario high schools and 3,800 students are involved in DECA, which is driven entirely by teacher volunteers and a student executive.

"It's truly an exciting club, it's great for the kids ... we work on their etiquette, their self-esteem, their leadership. It's also a crash course in growing up," says Olga Plagianakos, a math teacher at East York Collegiate Institute and an enthusiastic program volunteer. Her school was one of DECA's Canadian charter schools.

Plagianakos recently accompanied 250 Ontario students to DECA's International Business Competition in Anaheim, Calif., where Canadian students took home 120 medals in the 7,000-member competition. (Originally, DECA was known as the Distributive Educational Clubs of America, but as the organization expanded, the name was changed to DECA - An Association of Marketing Students. Delta Epsilon Chi, also known as DEX, is the university version of DECA.)

Competitions are the cornerstone of DECA and often involve case studies in which students apply their business knowledge to specific problems in different categories, such as retail merchandising, technical sales, restaurant management, food marketing, vehicles and petroleum marketing. Scenarios typically are contributed by business managers and owners, and judged by volunteers who are also drawn from industry.

"They're real-life examples," Plagianakos says of the case studies, which have been contributed by such companies as Staples Business Depot. "These cases are actually written up by managers, by owners of a business. The kids are given the case and certain materials, and are asked in 15 minutes to come up with a plan - and that's real-world."

If it sounds a little bit like television's The Apprentice, that's because the formula works: Having kids face situations they would grapple with in the business world and solve them on the spot forces them to draw not only on their classroom knowledge, but their collective experience, creativity and street smarts.

"A big part of it is their own personal learning," says Plagianakos, who acknowledges that classroom work is only part of the winning combination that includes preparation and students' ability to think on their feet. Initiative, she adds, is key to success.

"Whether they like it or not, once we put them in a category, they're the ones teaching themselves," she says.

Students say their experience in DECA has placed them much farther along the path to business knowledge than classroom experience alone could have.

"(DECA) teaches you what people are looking for, especially in business terms," says recent high school graduate Shauna Spencer of Dundas, who was the organization's Ontario events co-ordinator for 2004-05.

"I took (every business class) that was available to me other than Grade 9 business," Spencer says. "It sounds really bad to say, but ... I learned about 10 per cent of what I learned in DECA.

"Being able to present in front of a judge who is actually a real business person currently in the business world, you don't get that opportunity to present to somebody like that very often," she says.

Amy Lusk, a DECA alum who has volunteered as a competition judge and currently runs university-level competitions for DEX, attributes her success in accounting to her experience with DECA.

"I think the biggest thing it helped me with is presentation skills. I'll go into sales meetings here and have to present data and all my experience came from DECA and DEX, basically," Lusk says.

DECA also builds key skills in what may be one of the most important elements of business - networking. "It's amazing the contacts you make once somebody recognizes DECA or DEX. It's just an instant bond," Lusk says.

Catalina Lopez, who joined DECA at St. Augustine Catholic High School in Unionville, agrees. "Everyone says it's not what you know, it's who you know," she says. "When we went to Anaheim, you get to meet all these people that are in the business world."

For entrepreneurially minded students, DECA is able to provide a real-world headstart. "You have to research and write a business plan, which so many people further on in university don't even know how to do," Lopez says.

Plagianakos has seen many opportunities where young people were able to use DECA as a ramp toward their own businesses, including one who turned her proposal into a $12,000 summer job painting parking lot lines.

"I've got one girl in Grade 9 right now, she wants to start writing her business proposal this summer. A Grade 9 student doesn't typically have that opportunity, but she wants to be competing in the entrepreneurship category," Plagianakos says.

"Some schools will stop her because she's not age-appropriate. We gave her the structure, and it was up to her to come up with some content. It's really about experiences."

(Liz Clayton can be reached at clayton@businessedge.ca)