WORTHINGTON — Worthington High School students participating in the 59 Corridor CEO Program will host Fiesta De La Temporada on Saturday at the Long Branch Saloon in downtown Worthington. The event is open to the public and will include a Hispanic dinner, live entertainment by Hispanic music group Los Vandettas, a brief presentation on the 59 Corridore program and a special surprise competition.
The 59 Corridor CEO Program, in its first year in Worthington, has high school juniors and seniors learn under a facilitator as they start their own LLC or 501(c)(3) businesses. The students learn entrepreneurial skills and meet with local businesses as part of the program.
Money raised at Saturday’s event will go directly toward the students, serving as startup capital for their businesses. Aiming to have 16 local businesses attend the event, the group has confirmation from at least eight businesses thus far, including KIVU Immigration Law, State Farm Insurance, Edward Jones Investments and Minnesota West.
Cody Hendricks, a 59 Corridor CEO facilitator, said Fiesta De La Temporada was solely the idea of his students.
“They haven’t just been ‘pretty involved’ — they created it,” he said. “To frame that up for them, it was 100% driven by them. They created the business, they created the model. Initially, they went to create a lawn care business and did a handful of lawns, but weren’t getting the revenue that they needed. So, they pivoted towards this event. It’s 100% theirs. No one else has been guiding them. We meet every day and my role is to say, ‘Where are we at? What’s happening? Are we meeting deadlines?’”
Both Hendricks and the students said the process hasn’t been without its challenges.
“We’ve had to focus on that every day since it started,” said Carlos Chacon, a student in the program. “There’s been challenges in finding out about an available venue and what we’re going to have for food. The biggest issue is always going to be getting the people to be there and getting sales for the tickets.”
“Their big urgency right now is to sell more tickets before Saturday, but everything else has been them,” Hendricks added. “There were some hiccups around (finding a) venue. First, they looked at (about five or six different venues) before they found a location. And then with food and the logistics of planning an event… If you’re going to plan an event of any scale, it’s just a lot of logistics.”
With each challenge thrown at the students, the program has helped them learn to overcome them.
“I feel like the purpose of the CEO program is to kind of get us prepared for unexpected things,” Chacon said. “There was no correlation starting from the program to this, we just kind of had to find out and do it. That’s what the whole purpose of this program is, to get us to get up and just do things for what we want and get to that goal or whatever goal it is that we have.”
“The big curve ball is that they’ll show up to class and they’ll say, ‘We don’t know where to go or what to do next.’ So we troubleshoot the problem,” Hendricks added. “Instead of hypothesizing what we should do next, you do it. It’s like, ‘Well, do we have a venue?’ ‘Call them. Go there. Show up tomorrow, that’s where we’re going to go.’ Had you (students) not been here today right now, they would all be out trying to apply some high pressure sales. There’s no hypothetical to any of this, it all is happening (in real time).”
Students and teachers alike agreed that while the event isn’t for another several days, they are already looking forward to the satisfying reward of starting something up on their own. They said such a reward is not only for their hard work in organizing the event but being in the 59 Corridor CEO Program itself.
“You guys don’t know what to look for, but more than anything, there’s a tremendous sense of accomplishment that comes from completing something that you built yourself,” Hendricks said to his students. “You guys built this yourself and whatever it is, to whatever degree, if it’s successful or not, it was 100% on your merit. You built it and it was built from nothing. It didn’t exist before you and now you’ve created it. When the event happens, no matter what it is, there will be a sense of accomplishment and relief that will come from that. That’s something that only starting something yourself can really present.”
Fiesta De La Temporada is from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at the Long Branch Saloon, 206 10th St., Worthington. Tickets are available for purchase in advance by calling (507) 329-1879, and will also be sold at the door.
Samuel Martin became a reporter for The Globe in September 2023. He has a bachelor’s degree in media studies from the University of Sioux Falls.
