EPHS DECA project empowers women in business locally — and globally

During the times that Avni Maheshwari and Aishah Alam, both juniors at Eden Prairie High School (EPHS), have visited their family members in India, they have seen firsthand the contrast in how men and women are treated in the workforce.

Specifically, Maheshwari said many of her female relatives are not encouraged to work, and her mother doesn’t work while living in the United States. Maheshwari chalks a lot of this up to the disparities in education and other developmental resources that women face, especially in India.

“I think seeing the difference with the education and the resources that men receive versus women, it’s just, it’s opened my eyes, really,” Maheshwari said.

This realization spurred Maheshwari and Alam to create The LeadHER Project, a nonprofit through DECA that strives to empower women and other minority communities in the business and finance workforce.

DECA is a nonprofit high school and collegiate student organization that prepares members for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management. Currently, EPHS’ chapter is one of the top-ranked DECA chapters in the world.

Creating LeadHER

Maheshwari and Alam started to develop the idea for LeadHER last December and launched their social media account in March, which is around when they both started planning many of the project’s events.

LeadHER is under the “Community Awareness Project” competition category in DECA, according to Maheshwari. According to DECA’s website, this category “uses the project management process to raise awareness for a community issue or cause.”

“What really makes ‘Community Awareness’ stand out is the awareness portion in terms of impact, how many people are seeing the things you put out, impressions, just overall how many people you’re reaching and that impact,” Alam said.

In order to secure a spot to compete in the “Community Awareness Project,” Maheshwari and Alam had to pitch their idea to EPHS business and marketing teacher and DECA co-advisor Margot Cowing, who picks which projects she thinks would have the best success in competition.

After LeadHER was chosen, Maheshwari and Alam spent months conducting rigorous research, planning event timelines and figuring out logistics, mostly before the current school year started. Alam said another major part of this process was surveying students in Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), a college readiness program, about how much they knew about the gender and social gaps in the workforce that LeadHER is trying to tackle and what types of events they would most benefit from.

“This was kind of after we had already planned all our events, but it kind of verified that yes, our events will be successful, and yes, our events will hit the goals and kind of also give opportunities to the people in our community,” Alam said.

LeadHER Events

The first LeadHER event, which happened in August, involved helping children in a majority-Indian neighborhood in Eden Prairie create, market and sell products in a nearby park to the community. The children’s products were mainly homemade goods, ranging from classic bake sale items like cakes and muffins to traditional Indian food like pani puri and samosas.

According to Maheshwari, almost 200 people came through the neighborhood to buy products.

“We also had (the participants) go through (a) financial literacy workshop to kind of understand how to save, spend and keep their money that they earned, and also learning about profit margin,” Maheshwari said.

LeadHER is also hosting a college and networking event in December at EPHS, with representatives from multiple business schools, including the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, hosting question-and-answer sessions for students. Students from the AVID program have been invited, and Maheshwari said LeadHER has partnered with the St. Louis Park DECA chapter, which is significantly smaller than EPHS’, to share this opportunity and its resources.

The student-run organization’s efforts have not only been local, but international too. 

In January, LeadHER plans to partner with the Mann Deshi Foundation, an organization focused on supporting women’s economic development in rural Indian communities, for a mentorship event with multiple Minnesota-based business professionals. The professionals will join the Mann Deshi Foundation members for a Zoom call to talk about business opportunities and other important workplace skills.

“That’s not only helping them break language barriers, which they said was a huge issue for them, (but it’s) also providing them tech literacy and then helping them with developing their business ideas,” Maheshwari said.

Alam added the group is also currently developing a LeadHER website that they hope to launch internationally. The website will contain things ranging from fundraising campaigns and ways to volunteer to business development resources like help guides and internship databases.

The current main project is LeadHER’s Dress for Success Professional Clothing Drive, which is being held Nov. 14 to 26. The drive’s goal is to collect professional clothing items, like blazers, dress pants, heels and ties, to donate to minority youth and women in need, something Alam called a “stepping stone” for people trying to break into the professional workforce.

“During our background research, we saw that a lot of people are limited by their clothes and that actually causes them to maybe not go interview for a job, or feel less confident while they’re going to interview,” Alam said.

Donation bins are set out at the north entrance and the activity center of EPHS, as well as the Eden Prairie Community Center. Maheshwari said the PROP Food Shelf will also take and set aside donations for the clothing drive as well.

DECA State Competition

Maheshwari and Alam will compete with LeadHER at DECA’s State Career Development Conference from March 1 to 3 in Minneapolis. 

On top of the actual project and events the EPHS juniors have been working on over the past eight months, they also have to write a 20-page paper outlining the campaign and give a 15-minute presentation.

While it is a very intensive process, according to Maheshwari and Alam, they said they are excited to compete with a project that means a lot to both of them personally and that they believe has the chance to make a global impact.

“Now more than ever, it’s so important to kind of encourage that next generation to step into fields that they’re interested in,” Maheshwari said. “We’ve come so far as a global population of having those opportunities, making things accessible for many different people that, I think why stop there? Why just limit a certain gender or a certain group of people who have those opportunities to do something?”

LeadHER is accepting donations to its clothing drive at the donation bins in EPHS and the Eden Prairie Community Center, as well as at the PROP Food Shelf. To donate directly to LeadHER, visit the organization’s GoFundMe.