Junior Acheivement of B.C. is looking for some senior guidance to help students learn about business.
Junior Achievement, which has operated in B.C. since 1955, is the world’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to teaching youth about business, leadership and financial literacy.
“We have a curriculum that we bring into school classrooms,” said Deborah Wakeham. “We offer that curriculum to teachers, the teachers register their classes for our programs and we bring our programs directly into the school classrooms. It’s not like a field trip, where the kids have to worry about being transported someplace.”
But teachers don’t run the program. Instead, Junior Achievement relies on local business owners, entrepreneurs, managers and leaders to teach the students directly.
Junior Achievement curriculum is presented to Grades 5-12 students and are specifically tailored to each grade level.
The organization partners with local business professionals, introduces them to the curriculum and trains them to take the curriculum into the classroom and deliver it to students.
“They teach kids about how businesses get started, about how they’re operating, what financial management looks like. While they’re teaching this they also share all of their experiences from the real world with the kids. They story-tell and bring the program to life.”
The programs, supported by companies, foundations and individuals that donate to Junior Achievement, are offered free of charge to schools and students.
Junior achievement will deliver 250 programs to about 6,000 student on Vancouver Island this year. An estimated 600 students from the Nanaimo school district receive Junior Achievement programming annually.
In Nanaimo there are currently more requests from teachers for Junior Achievement programs than there are business professionals to assist delivering them.
The organization is specifically looking for volunteers from the business community to support programming scheduled at Cinnabar Valley, Frank J. Ney and Rutherford elementary schools, Woodlands Secondary and Cedar Community Secondary schools.
For more information about Junior Achievement, please visit the organization website at http://british-columbia.jacan.org.
People interested in volunteering, please contact Gail Stroud, program coordinator, at 1-250-510-7671 or via e-mail at gail.stroud@jabc.org.
