When Siri Bachigari and Sophie Palmieri, two juniors at Eden Prairie High School (EPHS), teamed up to create a competition project for DECA, a nonprofit high school and collegiate student organization that prepares members for careers in business, they knew they wanted to develop a campaign to support people with disabilities.
And thus, Fueled by Friendship was born.
Fueled by Friendship falls under DECA’s “Community Giving” competition category, according to Bachigari. In this category, teams create a nonprofit-style project that raises money or collects donations for various causes or charities.
The duo originally planned to raise money for youth with disabilities before narrowing their focus to working with True Friends, a Minnesota nonprofit that provides children and adults with disabilities with camp and retreat experiences. True Friends serves more than 25,000 people a year and operates several sites, including Camp Eden Wood in Eden Prairie.
Fueled by Friendship’s mission and its connection to True Friends hold special significance for Palmieri, whose older brother has autism and wasn’t getting the support he needed throughout school.
“We’ve seen, within our own school, the special needs department honestly does lack funding and support for how many students are in it to be able to fully support them properly,” Palmieri said.
Margot Cowing, a business and marketing teacher at EPHS and one of the school’s DECA advisors, said Bachigari and Palmieri started working on the project in late May.
“The girls, Siri and Sophie, ended up coming and pitching their familiarity with the organization,” Cowing said. “I believe Sophie has volunteered with (True Friends) in the past, and so it just was a perfect fit because they brought their interest forward.”
Fueled by Friendship’s first large-scale event was Powderpuff, a girls’ flag football game that has been a tradition at EPHS for more than a decade, held in late September. While Bachigari and Palmieri weren’t the primary organizers of the event (DECA officers plan it), they played a major role in advertising it and encouraging donations.
Powderpuff hosted two games, one for underclassmen and one for upperclassmen, with the freshmen and juniors narrowly winning their matchups. In total, the event raised almost $10,000, with $5,000 of it going to True Friends, Bachigari said.
Fueled by Friendship also held a Day of Service in October, where Bachigari and Palmieri rounded up volunteers to help clean and organize the True Friends campgrounds.
“We ended up doing two weeks’ worth of work in just two hours,” Bachigari said. “It was really helpful for the workers at True Friends because there really is just one groundskeeper, and he can’t kind of keep up with the amount of work that’s necessary, especially during the fall.”
While True Friends is a major focus of Fueled by Friendship, Palmieri said they also wanted to shift some of the work to EPHS and its special education department. Fueled by Friendship just wrapped up its “Aid for Abilities” donation drive, which collected more than 350 items, including board games, fidget toys, arts and crafts materials, and sports equipment for the high school’s special education department.
Right before Thanksgiving, Bachigari and Palmieri also worked with the EPHS special education department to put on a “Friendsgiving” for students, using many of the items donated in the “Aid for Abilities” drive.
The last project Fueled by Friendship will tackle is a campaign to help market and boost enrollment for a class at EPHS called “Music Insights,” which combines general and special education students, Bachigari said.
“Right before winter break, we’ll start marketing that class out and hopefully that would help get more enrollments as enrollments happen pretty soon after winter break,” Bachigari said.
Bachigari and Palmieri will compete with Fueled by Friendship at the DECA State Career Development Conference from March 1 to 3 in Minneapolis, Cowing said. In addition to having a successful project, the EPHS juniors must write a 20-page paper detailing Fueled by Friendship and give a 15-minute presentation.
Even though the competition is still months away, Bachigari and Palmieri said the support they have received so far from the community has been one of the most rewarding aspects of their project.
“Seeing how our project has been impacting real people and getting to hear about their experiences has been something that’s been really touching to see,” Bachigari said.
Learn more about Fueled by Friendship on its Instagram.
