Junior Achievement

by Dani Greer

We'd be remiss in our exploration of entrepreneurship for young people if we didn't mention Junior Achievement. Founded in 1916 during the The Eastern States Agricultural and Industrial Exposition in Springfield, Massachusetts, co-founders Theodore N. Vail, president of AT&T, and Horace A. Moses, president of Strathmore Paper Company had this goal:

"The future of our country depends upon making every individual fully realize the obligations and responsibilities belonging to citizenship. Habits are formed in youth…what we need in this country now … is to teach the growing generations to realize that thrift and economy, coupled with industry, are necessary now as they were in past generations."  

Originally developed for young people ages 16-21, the program was centered in metropolitan centers and the clubs were called Junior Achievement Companies. JA has since grown to become known as the world's largest organization dedicated to teaching students about entrepreneurism, workforce readiness, and financial literacy. Programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace.

Courses are taught through schools and today include a curriculum from kindergarten through high school. Textbooks and materials are developed at the national headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which hundreds of metropolitan JA offices then disperse into their area schools via volunteer training programs. Worldwide influence is impressive. Last year alone, almost 4.1 million students participated in 182, 811 classes, all taught by local business volunteers.

The classes themselves offer an interesting and diverse range of topics. In the elementary school program, for example, the courses accelerate through issues starting with "ourselves" up to "our nation", and end with JA BizTown™ where children role-play workers and consumers by way of a series of lessons. Through the process they learn:

Concepts– Banking, Business, Careers, Charitable giving, Citizenship, Competition, Conservation, Consumers, Demand, Division of labor, Employment, Exchange, Goods, Marketing, Markets, Money, Needs, Opportunity costs, Producers, Production, Quality, Resources, Saving, Scarcity, Services, Skills, Specialization, Supply, Wants.

Skills– Analysis, Applying information, Budgeting, Cause and effect, Critical thinking, Computation, Data collection, Decision-making, Following directions, Graphing, Interpersonal communication, Listening, Negotiation, Observation, Planning, Predicting outcomes, Problem-solving, Reading, Research, Role-playing, Setting goals, Spending, Taking responsibility, Teamwork.

And this in 5th grade! Middle school and high school programs are developed along the same lines but with increasing complexity to suit the age of the student. By the time the student is in high school, the Junior Achievement Student Center online is provided for teens to explore careers, find a college, manage their money, and even start a business of their own.

Have you ever taken a Junior Achievement class through your school? Have you perhaps taught a course as a business volunteer? It's a very rewarding experience and I highly encourage you to consider it. Contact a Junior Achievement office near you and find out about their training programs. You'll be amazed at the fantastic resource materials you'll share with your students, and how much fun the experience is for everyone involved.

For more information, click over to the Junior Achievement website. By all means if you have a child in a school that doesn't have the JA programs in place, ask a principal to check into it. There are even programs available for rural and foreign schools. You'll be glad your children learned these life skills from an early age in a creative and playful environment.