Last month, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the JA World Huizenga Center in Coconut Creek, Florida. “JA” stands for Junior Achievement, which is a non-profit youth organization founded in 1919. They are a national organization with chapters all over the country that work with local businesses and organizations to deliver experiential programs on topics of financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship to students in kindergarten through high school.
Junior Achievement of South Florida was founded locally in 1959 by the Fort Lauderdale Rotary Club. In its first year, it served just 373 high school students. In the 2011-2012 school year, JA programs reached 44,000 Broward and South Palm Beach County students.
Their JA World Huizenga Center is an impressive modern facility that opened its doors for the first time in 2009, thanks to gifts by Wayne and Marti Huizenga, among many other philanthropists whose name don the walls inside the facility. It is located on the Broward College North Campus in Coconut Creek. I first visited JA World when The James Madison Institute rented the facility to hold a Constitution Day event on September 17. While there, I took a look around and spoke to some of the staff about what they did there. They invited me to volunteer, which I was able to do on November 18, while on a different trip back in South Florida.
My volunteer time was from 9:00am to 2:30pm on a Monday. Prior to my arrival there, I had to submit a form for a background check and watch a thirty-minute slideshow (via my laptop) that walked me through what my responsibilities would be for the day. Upon arrival at the facility, I sat with about a dozen other volunteers as the JA World staff walked us through our responsibilities and gave us each a binder that instructed us on how to facilitate the activities for the students throughout the day. I have to say, I was thoroughly impressed with how easy they made the volunteer program. It’s no wonder they get a lot of volunteers, which helps defray costs of paying additional staff.
On the day I volunteered, about 150 students from a local middle school came in around 9:30am. They gathered in the center of the facility to listen to instructions from the JA World staff, while each of my fellow volunteers and I “manned” a “storefront.” Each of the “stores” in the facility represents a place each of the students will need to stop during the course of the day to buy products and pay their bills. They are taught the financial lessons of life. Each of the stores is sponsored by a local business. For example, if they want to “buy” a car, they stop into AutoNation. To buy groceries, they visit Publix; to donate part of their earnings, they visit the United Way – where I was stationed for the day.
At the beginning of the day, the students are each given a profile. They are told how old they are, whether they are married or single, how many kids they might have, what their occupation and income are, and what their life goals are. They will use this information when making decisions on how much they should spend on a house, whether they should buy designer or discount clothes, and how often they should eat out at a restaurant, among the many decisions we all have to make in life.
They also must donate a required percentage of their income (I believe it was a 2% minimum) to charity as well as invest at least some portion into their savings account (I believe it was 5%). I really like all of these requirements. It teaches the students they cannot live on borrowed money, they need to save for the future, and they must also be charitable and participate in civil society. After all, if it was not for philanthropy, the JA World Huizenga Center would not exist and they would not have had the opportunity to visit such a facility on this field trip day.
The JA curriculum is now a requirement for all 5th grade and 8th grade students in Broward County. It is during those class years that students also visit the JA World. While the 5th graders learn how to run a business, the 8th graders are taught personal finance. Throughout the day, I heard many of these 8th graders make comments about how expensive life is and how they now understand why their parents sometimes tell them they can’t eat out or buy those designer clothes.
At a time in American history when so many individuals in our country live paycheck to paycheck, have amassed much personal debt, and where our government is spending billions more dollars than it is taking in, adding to a soaring national deficit, it is encouraging to see so many thousands of young people learning the lessons of personal finance.
I encourage everyone I know to find a Junior Achievement program in your community and get involved as a volunteer and as a philanthropist. They really are making a major impact and teaching the lessons that can’t be taught on a normal day in school. The greater impact their programs have, the greater our country will continue to be.