Junior Achievement of Northern New England seeks to gain donor commitments, and community awareness of the importance of empowering Boston's at-risk students to own their economic success. Through financial literacy education, JA programs blaze positive pathways that foster hope for young people who deal with adverse life factors that may compromise their future success. JA programs are taught by dedicated volunteers who add a layer of positive reinforcement to the classroom presentation.
Our beneficiaries are Boston's at-risk students whose economic status is at the poverty level. Research shows that conditions of poverty can severely reduce access to the educational experiences that children need to be successful in school. Through financial literacy education, Junior Achievement programs blaze positive pathways for students that inspire career exploration and teach skills necessary to economic self-sufficiency.
Using the JA delivery model, a trained business volunteer will be assigned to an "at-risk" high school classroom in Boston to teach the students core financial literacy & workforce readiness lessons - budgeting, saving, resume-writing, and interviewing skills. These lessons, which help students to appreciate the importance of staying in school in order to earn a living once out of school, are not consistently being taught in our community. Junior Achievement helps to bridge this gap.
It's been proven that students who receive Junior Achievement (JA) six times during their school career are 90% more likely to graduate from high school. The long-term goal of our project will be for youth to develop attitudes aligned with high school graduation and 21st century skills that prepare them for success. Through the efforts to continuously impact students, our project would provide much-needed financial literacy education to an at-risk Boston classroom of 23 students.
