Beans for Barks

Our names are Katie Sauer, Paige Murphy, and Mackenzie Callahan and we are students at Nipmuc Regional High School in Upton, Massachusetts. At Nipmuc, we are involved in a club known as DECA, standing for Distributional Education Clubs of America. DECA is a national organization at both the high school and collegiate levels which teaches students business and leadership skills through competitions; in said competitions, students compete in a variety of activities to win scholarships and awards, and strengthen their overall abilities to be leaders.

 The goal of our DECA project this year is to raise awareness in central Massachusetts, where we reside, for animal cruelty, and to donate a goal of $5000 to local animal shelters. To raise this money, we are going to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as local print media, to advertise our cause and encourage people to donate. We are also going to organize a 5K run in our town to raise money for our fundraiser. Thirdly, we have connections with Red Barn Coffee Roasters, to sell special flavors of coffee in three of their locations in central MA, from which part of the revenue will be donated to our fund. None of the revenue will be kept for ourselves; Red Barn Coffee will keep enough money so as to keep their business running, but will allow us to donate some of the coffee's proceeds to our fundraiser. The "Beans for Barks" name comes from the third part of our fundraising; through coffee, we help raise money to support shelter animals of central MA. 

The project is expected to run from late September-early October 2015 to late December- early January 2016.