We're On Our Way!

After all the dust has settled, we were successful with fund-raising, and we have enough money to get the team to the Nationals. While some good luck came into play (we did not have to cover our instructor's expenses, and the competition found a roommate for Alex, which reduced the cost by several hundred dollars), most of it came from the generosity of people such as yourselves, who kindly donated money to help us.

Basically, our target ended up being reduced to $3657, not including food. The TechPrep organization and the corporate donations provided $2740. Other donations, were $210. Thanks to your kindness, our blog raised $807.01, after PayPal fees, which gave us $3757.01 total! We have a hundred dollars (plus a penny) to help defray our food costs

We thank you so much for helping provide the financial assistance to be able to go to Nationals in Kansas City. It is a huge relief to have our flight and hotel costs covered and we really couldn't thank you enough. We could not have done it without your generous donations! This is a wonderful opportunity and we definitely look forward to competing at Nationals. Your kindness is very much appreciated.

Also, the News-Herald article about us:

Teens create app for Avery Dennison

Thanks again!

Monika Martic
Alex Skrabski
Kayla McCauley

At Capstone presentation, prior to graduation

Please Help Us Get to Nationals!

Our team is seeking financial assistance for our trip to the 2011 SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference Competition being held in Kansas City, MO. Our success with our CIS/partnership project has allowed us to compete and win at local, regional, and state levels, and financial considerations are impeding our ability to go compete and win the National Championship.

We are enrolled in Ohio College Tech Prep through Lakeland Community College, which is a two-year program in a technical field that blends academic coursework with applied learning. We are graduating in June. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working with our business partner Avery Dennison. This entailed creating a technology project that would provide a meaningful learning experience for the team. After several meetings, we proposed a mobile application that provides order information for fulfilling shipments to customers.

We spent many hours in analysis and design, receiving feedback from worker surveys, and devoting considerable time on-site working with our mentors. We then worked on coding and testing with some assistance from the Avery Dennison team. During this time, we also documented our efforts, tracked our time spent, and prepared our presentation materials.

As a result of our hard work, on March 1, 2011, we placed first at the Lakeland Community College Showcase. Next, we competed and won against 23 other teams at the regional event held at Cuyahoga Community College. This qualified us to compete on April 29^th at the SkillsUSA Championship in Columbus, OH. We were awarded gold medals, representing a first place victory yet again. Our efforts have even earned us summer internships at Avery Dennison.

We are currently preparing for the National Competition, which is June 19 – June 25 in Kansas City, MO. We are continuing to refine our project though gathering user feedback, applying enhancements, and updating our presentation and documentation. However, budgeted funds to date have been exhausted. We are the first group to advance this far, and there is no budget in place for this situation. As you may be aware, it is virtually impossible for educational institutions to have such discretionary funds available on such short notice.

For these reasons, we are trying to raise money to cover airfare, hotel, and food expenses, and are accepting donations. If you would like to contribute, a PayPal account has been set up, which can be accessed from this blog. You do not have to have a PayPal account to contribute via this method. If you are not able to make a donation, we would appreciate it if you would share/post a link to this blog.

Thanks for your consideration. We sincerely hope that you are able to assist us in any way possible, in order to help us fund this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Monika Martic

Alex Skrabski

Kayla McCauley


Alex, Monika, and Kayla doing workflow analysis at a plant.