Hello, our names are Kathleen and Rachel Nguyen, and we are writing on behalf of our Virtual Enterprise firm, ROOTS, from Westminster High School, to ask for your help to attend a youth business summit in New York. Westminster High School is Title I eligible where 82% of students are economically disadvantaged; to break it down, 72% of students are in the free lunch program, and 10% of students are in the reduced-price lunch program. In partnership with our community, the vision of Westminster High School is to develop globally responsible and empowered students—the philosophy behind the Virtual Enterprise curriculum dovetails seamlessly into this vision. Virtual Enterprise encourages students to create and run their own mock companies, and at Westminster High School, we have 17 highly hard-working students in our class. 


We created a virtual business called ROOTS through Virtual Enterprise (VE) International as a class project. Out of 20,000 high schools worldwide, our firm ranked top 10% in Company Branding, top 20% for Fall Design for Delight (D4D), and Honorable Mention in Elevator Pitch. We have had unique opportunities to develop and demonstrate career readiness competencies in different business domains, such as outlining our firm’s bank statements, investments, and other assets and building an advertising strategy. Our finance and marketing plan qualifies us to advance to the final round at the Youth Business Summit (YBS) in New York during the second week of April. Unfortunately, we do not have the means to cover the travel expenses: airfare to and from New York City, ground transportation, hotel accommodations, and meals. If we can raise enough support for our class, ROOTS will be 1 of 7 high schools competing in the finance competition and 1 of 14 in the marketing competition. Our school has never made it this far in the competition, so we would like to represent the city of Westminster in these prestigious competitions. Thank you so much for your support!