On April 12, Morris Hills students traveled to the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York for the annual Virtual Enterprises (VE) International Youth Business Summit.

Business Strategies, an elective offered at Morris Hills, follows the VE curriculum throughout the year, as students build their own company and products from the ground up. At this year’s summit, two companies represented the Academy – PetConnect and DreamClean – and one represented Morris Hills – 1Charge.

Thousands of students from across the globe participated in the event, each representing their own student-led “company.” The event was a major success with over 250 firms and nearly 4800 attendees.

After each firm set up its booth, students (or “employees”) walked around, met other students, and bought products from competing firms using VE money. Also visiting each booth were judges, who evaluated each firm based on their booth design, sales pitch, and presentation.

In preparation for the Youth Business Summit, each company spent months preparing booths, decorations, company swag, raffles, and more to market their products and win competitions effectively.

PetConnect CEO Akshay Dhawan said, “It was really fun seeing so many different companies. We saw companies from California, Germany, and Austria, and it was cool to see so many types of companies and products.”

Several students had the opportunity to participate in various challenges offered at the Youth Business Summit. Junior Ishita Banerjee competed in the Rapid Prototyping Challenge. “We met a ton of people from South Carolina to Brazil. Everyone had worked really hard to get to this point and had their own great ideas to pitch in,” she said.

Juniors Ruhi Kamdar and Vrishank Malik participated in the Global Sustainability Project Case Study, where they advanced to the next round.

This year’s Youth Business Summit was certainly a success and a formative experience for Morris Hills students – or more accurately, Morris Hills entrepreneurs!