Since 1919, Junior Achievement has helped over 10 million students through their programs focused on inspiring and preparing young people to succeed in the global economy. Junior Achievement provides in-depth and engaging, prepared curriculum for volunteers and students covering Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance, and Career Success. Additionally, JA has opportunities for Job Shadowing and participation in their hands-on facility in downtown Detroit, Quicken Loans JA Finance Park.
That Next Level began its partnership with Junior Achievement of Southeast Michigan in the spring semester of 2017. TNL provided sponsorship of 10 JA classes at Cody Medicine and Community Health High School for 10th, 11th and 12th grade students. Twelve volunteers from varied professional backgrounds (engineering, medicine, human resources, property management) participated in teaching 7 JA Personal Finance and 3 JA Career Success. The volunteers took time out of their busy schedules to engage the students in learning about planning for their future, saving, budgeting, proper use of credit, and being a savvy consumer (Personal Finance) and critical thinking/creativity, communication, conflict management, collaboration, getting hired, work priorities and researching careers (Career Success). The Personal Finance course was taught for 1 hour each week for 5 weeks and the Career Success was taught for 1 hour each week for 7 weeks. Volunteers worked with the teachers to ensure classroom participation but the volunteers directed the classes using the JA curriculum as their guide as well as their real-world personal experiences. Upon conclusion of the last JA class, TNL hosted a school wide presentation and pizza party to the students. RESSCO owner, Shawn Stafford, a product of Detroit Public Schools and successful entrepreneur, spoke to the students about his experiences and transition from DPS student to owning a multimillion-dollar company. TNL distributed the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and a t-shirt to each student that participated in the Personal Finance and Career Success JA courses. TNL’s first program was able to reach 200 students during the spring 2017 semester!
TNL is working with JA to continue teaching courses at Cody MCH and expand its reach to 2 additional Detroit Public high schools for the 2017-18 school year. Please consider volunteering with TNL to continue Junior Achievement’s long history of providing children with real world skills to be knowledgeable consumers and professionals.