My name is Chanayah Nobriga. I am the president of the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) club that we have here at HHIS. My classmates Kaena Tagabi, Malachi Pesta and I decided to compete in the Career and Technical Student Organization (CTSO) competition that takes place on O’ahu. 

Career and Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) are key components to strong Career Technical Education (CTE) programs. CTSOs integrate into CTE programs and courses and extend teaching and learning through innovative programs, business and community partnerships and leadership experiences at the school, state and national levels.

Within the CTSO competition, there are events called STAR events that we can choose from to participate in. We decided to do the Hospitality, Tourism and Recreation event. We were tasked to demonstrate our knowledge of the hospitality, tourism, and recreation industries and ability to translate our knowledge into a hypothetical or real business. We chose to create a recreation business and researched an existing business that is similar to our project. Some things that were required were developing a business plan and client services information, and creating a website that highlights the business. Along with everything we created an online portfolio and an online presentation. 

After all our hard work, we ended up placing Silver for our event which is now giving us the opportunity to compete nationally. We were so excited to hear the great news and ready to take it to the next level. Being that this competition takes place on Oahu, we found out that we were the only outer island school to place top 3 in an event. To add more to the great news that we received, we were also told that it was the first time our school entered this competition and placed! Hearing all that great news made it even more special to us, especially since it’s our senior year.

One thing that was the most challenging about this competition was that since it was our first time doing it, figuring out what to do and where to start seemed impossible. But after talking with my group members and thinking of what we are all commonly interested in, it started to come together and became easier to come up with ideas. My experience with this competition was very fun but hard working and time consuming. It’s a great feeling knowing that our long hours, days and weeks of work paid off in the end to get us FIRST place. I liked being able to use our creative thinking to create a business plan as if we were entrepreneurs. I love how dedicated my team and I were with this project. I can definitely say that doing this competition helped us work on our professionalism and time management skills. We are excited to compete in Nationals and hope to bring back a gold metal!