Millbrook’s Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America Club (FCCLA) held its Holiday Express event on December 4. Holiday Express is a five-hour community service opportunity at Pullen Park in downtown Raleigh. This event is known to be where people can experience crafts, holiday lights, and other holiday activities. Holiday Express at Pullen Park has support from its sponsors: Johnson Lexus, Duke Energy, WRAL, Wake Med, and more. FCCLA member and senior Jorjoh Samba, who participated in the event, described it as “a holiday activity based around kids, so we were in charge of games and keeping kids safe.” FCCLA is a prominent club here at Millbrook, but what is FCCLA exactly?

Describing FCCLA  

FCCLA is a national career and technical student organization for students interested in family and consumer sciences. FCCLA was founded in 1945 when 29 home economic leaders in Illinois came up with the idea to create an organization to prepare students for their future at home and in the workplace. Today, 244,000 students, across 5,300 chapters, are a part of FCCLA.

 FCCLA member and junior, Kennedy Rivers described FCCLA as if, “home-ec had a club. It’s like if you have any childhood culinary interior design or any of those types of classes, you use all of those skills and do a project, and you complete it. There’s also community service and stuff around the school you can do to help which also requires those skills.” 

  Samba added to Rivers’ statement saying, “[FCCLA] stands for Family Career Community Leaders of America. We use every aspect of it, I mean we’re a family as a club like we work together so often, and we do these group events and these group community service things so often so we are together so much that we’re a family, and we try to work towards our community and our careers.” 

  FCCLA member and senior, Siah Greene further added, “Just to add to our community, we try to give back to our community, we also have an adopt-a-family coming up soon so that’s also giving back to our community.”

How does FCCLA benefit you

FCCLA has proven to provide students with the opportunity to learn leadership skills and gain leadership potential, problem-solving skills, planning skills, and setting goals for themselves. FCCLA engages students with competition events, and community service opportunities, and provides students with scholarship opportunities.

 “FCCLA has benefited me by giving me so many skills, like for example being more professional when it comes to things more important like my project. Then we have to dress a certain way, wear certain shoes, and talk a certain way when talking to the judges when we competing,” Samba said when asked how FCCLA benefits her.

  “It helps you become more mindful. I recently had a project that has something to do with fast fashion and how it’s hurting our environment so it helps us be more mindful,” said Greene. 

  Rivers said, “For me, it helped me to be able to communicate more. I feel like [I] communicate a lot better with my teachers, my bosses at work, and just people around me better because I know how to speak to them in a certain way.”

FCCLA Events

  Rivers explained, “For Greenville, all of the officers go and we learn how to prepare the underclassmen. How to be professional and they learn how to public speak and the professional attire we have to wear which not only helps them learn how to compete but also helps us get to know them better.” According to the official FCCLA website, FCCLA competitions are held by a member selected from over 50 different competition events, and they present a project using skills from different classes.

  FCCLA member and Millbrook High School sophomore, Genevive Charland explained her project stating, “In the Nutrition and Wellness event, my project focuses on Crohn’s disease, educating others on its symptoms, dietary management, and lifestyle adjustments to improve the quality of life for those affected.”

 FCCLA is a prominent club not only in high schools in the United States but also in Millbrook. FCCLA has been proven to use its club to work towards building skills in home economics and working to give back to our community. Their upcoming events are states in Greensboro in March as well as nationals in Orlando at the end of June.