Student Information Session at Alpha High School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) is the largest student-led business organization in the world with over a quarter million members in the United States and several foreign countries. With its diverse activities and numerous competitive events, FBLA is preparing students for careers in business, promotes creativity, enhances public speaking and presentation skills, and fosters leadership.
Senior Edwin Bodoni and Junior Evelyn Bodoni are members of the FBLA chapter at Cherry Creek High School Creek. They have been passionately engaged in FBLA since freshman year. Because they firmly believe that FBLA is a great organization, when presented with the opportunity to promote FBLA on a global level, the Bodoni siblings did not hesitate to share their FBLA experience and inspire youth world-wide to participate in FBLA. After months of preparation, they recruited a delegation and traveled to Budapest in January 2018 and to Dar es Salaam in July 2018 to introduce FBLA in Hungary and Tanzania. Enthusiasm for FBLA was extraordinary and nine high schools implemented FBLA chapters with total membership exceeding 600 students.
Edwin and Evelyn Bodoni – Hungarian FBLA Winter Leadership Conference at Toldy Ferenc Gimnazium, Budapest, Hungary.
To financially support these new foreign FBLA chapters, Edwin and Evelyn established Global Outreach FBLA (GOFBLA), a Colorado-based nonprofit, with the mission to promote leadership and expose youth in developing countries to business and entrepreneurial experiences by encouraging them to participate in FBLA. Inspiring youth to take initiative is key to progress and improvement. GOFBLA is committed to investing in student learning and teacher training without cost to the schools, government, or parents.
The Bodonis' goal for 2019 is to raise enough funds to sponsor eight students (four from Tanzania and four from Hungary) and three teachers (two from Tanzania and one from Hungary) to attend and compete at the 2019 FBLA National Leadership Conference (NLC), hosted in San Antonio, Texas, in June. However, to carry out such an ambitious plan, they asked their fellow Creek FBLA chapter members and their Creek chapter advisors (Michael Goodman and Jennifer Sheets) for help and support. All Creek FBLA chapter members accepted the challenge to be part of this endeavor and were actively involved in at least one aspect of this undertaking. The tasks included: mentorship, fundraising and planning the trip to the 2019 NLC. As part of the Community Service Committee (chaired by Creek FBLA president, Edwin Bodoni), the following sub-committees were established and chairs appointed are mentorship committee – Mariam Gopalani, fundraising committee – Evelyn Bodoni, marketing/publicity committee – Abhinav Kakumanu, and NLC planning committee – Melanie Gong.