What Is DECA?

Where can you go to have fun, have a positive effect on your community and learn - all at the same time?

Where can you go to learn about marketing, starting your own business, getting involved in e-commerce, the ins and outs of international business?

Where can you tap into $250,000 of awards and scholarships from major U.S. corporations?

Where can you get those leadership skills that will give you a head start toward a real career?

Where can you enter your class projects into a competition that could lead you not only to applause but to self-confidence and usable skills?

How can you travel to conferences designed for sharp, ambitious teens like you?

Want to learn how to associate with businesspeople and network your way into the future?

For over 55 years DECA, the association of marketing students, has been leading talented young people just like you toward real careers and lifetime skills. These days, DECA is more than keeping pace. Our Competitive Events Program amplifies what you learn in the classroom and even includes the Virtual Business Challenge - a business management simulation - and the 7 UP Challenge Web design event.

Are you interested in sports and entertainment marketing, in the travel or hospitality business, in fashion, in a retail career, in advertising, in the restaurant trade? Activities and skills in these and any other marketing specialty are available to you in DECA. And along the way you'll make friendships that will last forever.

What We Stand For

In 1946, the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) organized around an ambitious goal: to improve educational and career opportunities in marketing, management and entrepreneurship for students. In the years since, DECA has remained on the cutting edge of educational innovation, working with the business community to integrate academic achievement with career and technical skills.

Over time, the needs of our membership have changed, and we have changed to meet them. Yet the fundamental reasons we formed remain at our core: First, effective marketing education gives young people the tools and aptitudes they need to pursue their dreams. Second, marketing education works best when it's part of an integrated education program linking classroom instruction with internship experience for career success.

With 180,000 student members and faculty advisors, we function as the companion student organization to over 5,000 marketing education programs in secondary and postsecondary schools across the U.S., its territories and Canada. Our once-revolutionary ideas have become models for effective educational alternatives. DECA remains committed to the advocacy of marketing education and the growth of business and education partnerships.