Junior Achievement

Junior Achievement

Founder(s)	Theodore Vail, Horace Moses
Type	501c3
Founded	1919
Location	Colorado Springs, Colorado
Key people	Sean C. Rush, Jack Kosakowski
Area served	Worldwide
Mission	To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy.
Volunteers	330,000
Website	http://www.ja.org

Junior Achievement or JA or JA Worldwide is a non-profit youth organization that was founded in 1919 by Horace A. Moses, Theodore Vail, and senator Winthrop M. Crane. JA focuses on educating kids in K-12 about the free enterprise system. Junior Achievement originally began as a collection of small, after-school business clubs for students on the East Coast of the United States, but has since grown to become known as the world's largest organization dedicated to teaching students about entrepreneurism, workforce readiness and financial literacy.

Junior Achievement's global headquarters is located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The organization merged its U.S. and international operations in 2004, and currently reaches 10 million youth in 123 countries.

Junior Achievement's programs focus on work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, and teach young people important skills to help them become economically empowered. JA students learn how to start and grow a business, how to successfully contribute in the workplace, and how to effectively manage the money they earn. Junior Achievement programs also 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. Students put these lessons into action and learn the value of contributing to their communities.

JA programs are taught in the classroom and after school by community volunteers, who use JA curriculum and share their work-life experiences with students.

Programs

Junior Achievement develops and maintains programs for children of all ages. The curriculum for each program is developed and maintained by a team of educational professionals. Both in-school and after-school JA programs are taught by community volunteers. Its programs are funded by businesses, foundations, individuals and special events. They are designed to be taught in the classroom by business, parent, and community volunteers.

Elementary

• JA Ourselves
• JA Our Families
• JA Our Community
• JA Our City
• JA Our Region
• JA Our Nation

Middle Grades

• JA America Works
• JA Economics for Success
• JA Finance Park
• JA Global Marketplace
• JA It's My Business!
• JA's Biz Kid$
• Scope and Sequence

High School

• JA Banks in Action
• JA Business Ethics
• JA Careers with a Purpose
• JA Company Program
• JA Economics
• JA Exploring Economics
• JA Titan
• JA Personal Finance
• JA Success Skills
• JA Job Shadow

Programs implemented outside the U.S. include:

• FOME
• GLOBE
• MMBiz: My Money Business
• YE Cambridge University Exam
• Hewlett Packard Global Business Challenge

• Scope and Sequence

See also

• Junior Enterprise

External links

• Junior Achievement
• JA Titan
• Junior Achievement Archives
• Entrepreneur Spotlight Interview with Connie Lanzl and Susan Spencer of Junior Achievement of the Upstate of South Carolina