Junior Achievement (JA) is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to own their economic success, plan for their future, and make smart academic and economic choices.
Their programs—in the core content areas of work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy—ignite the spark in young people to experience and realize the opportunities and realities of work and life in the 21st century. They reach more than four million students per year in 176,000 classrooms and after-school locations. Their programs are taught by volunteers in inner cities, suburbs, and rural areas throughout the United States, in more than 120 Area Offices in all 50 states.
Here in San Diego, Junior Achievement is making an impact this summer by providing curriculum and equipping hundreds of C2C participants with job readiness and life skills training. JA also conducted a train-the-trainers workshop for a CONNECT2Careers staff member, which will allow the program to sustain itself in the coming years.
Junior Achievement has been an advocate for the CONNECT2Careers program by not only equipping San Diego’s workforce, but also hiring a C2C student for the summer. Michaela Valk was hired as an Administrative Assistant Intern and is excited to become part of the team, assisting with a variety of projects and tasks revolving around their new database.
Their investment in C2C did not stop there. Recently, Junior Achievement announced the program through their e-newsletter, reaching more than 10K readers!
When local programs work together to maximize resources and talent, everyone wins. In this case, Junior Achievement and CONNECT2Careers collaborated beautifully to share the responsibility of developing our future workers for the real world,” said Peter Callstrom.” The collective impact is a more viable workforce and sustainable program model. They are an invaluable partner and sterling example of leveraging resources for the greater good.”