After falling short of making it to Nationals for Deca in 2023, juniors Riley Carroll and Cathryn Wascher knew that they needed to do something special for their project this year. On Saturday, September, 30th, the team held a two mile breast cancer awareness walk at Prospect that was open for anyone in the community to attend. 

Carroll and Wascher partnered with Northwest Community Hospital for this event. All of the donations that they received went to the Gift a Mammogram Program, which is a program that is used to buy mammograms for lower-income women.  

“My favorite part about doing it was the connection with Northwest Community Hospital because it is kind of a surreal thing being able to work with the hospital that most people in the community go to,” Carroll said.

This walk not only raised awareness for breast cancer, but it also brought together the community. Lots of families came to the walk, along with other Prospect students and members of the Deca Team. 

“People were actually outside complimenting the girls and asking what they were doing. So it was really cool to hear them say we are doing this for breast cancer awareness and that it was through the Deca Club at Prospect,” Club Advisor Andrea Izenstark said. 

Izenstark helps run Deca, which is the business club at Prospect. In this club, students are put in real world scenarios and take what they learned and apply it to those scenarios. This year Carroll and Wascher are in the event called Project Management Community Giving, so as business students they are working on managing a project. They chose the goal of raising money for breast cancer awareness, but then everything comes back to the business side like how they use materials, plan the event, create a timeline, and a budget. 

Even though part of this event was about the business behind events like this, Carroll still had a personal connection to it, as do many people in the community. 

“My aunt who actually was a businesswoman died from breast cancer, so that made me feel even more connected to this event and what we were doing it for,” Caroll said. 

Carroll and Wascher have already raised over $4,000 in donations to help raise awareness for breast cancer. They also have been selling pink bracelets during lunch periods throughout the month of October and all of the money raised through that will also go towards the Gift a Mammogram program.