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November 14, 2018

Junior Achievement: Maybe money's not so bad

Photo | Michael C. Bingham Learning through doing: JA chapter board chair Heyl (center) with JA students and volunteers at Wednesday's breakfast.
By Michael C. Bingham

Junior Achievement of Southwest New England hosted its ninth annual Partners in Achievement Breakfast fundraiser Wednesday morning at the New Haven Lawn Club. About 200 businesspeople, JA volunteers and students attended.

The group, which teaches financial literacy and entrepreneurship to elementary and secondary students, raises 100 percent of its $2 million annual chapter budget through contributions. So it made a direct and unapologetic pitch to breakfast attendees — present and potential “Partners in Achievement” — for gifts of cash, in-kind contributions and even stocks.

The fundraising goal for the breakfast, according to JA chapter President and CEO Jeremy Race, was $60,000 to $80,000.

In addition to financial contributions, JA depends heavily on business volunteers -- some 2,900 during 2017 — to provide free programs to schools throughout the region preaching the virtues if financial independence and the benefits of business-creation. Chapter-wide, some 47,000 young people participated in JA programs during 2017, according to Race.

As it approaches its centennial celebration next year, JA preaches a gospel of economic ambition and financial self-sufficiency that is less in step with the values of the larger society than when Junior Achievement was founded in 1919 as the Boys’ & Girls’ Bureau of the Eastern States League.

Nevertheless, according to Race and JA chapter board chairman G. Christopher Heyl of CiDRA Corporate Services, JA’s message of “learning through doing” continues to exert a powerful pull on the young people who are touched by JA programs and volunteers from the business community.

How powerful? According to Race, about one in five JA student participants pursues a career in a field introduced to them by a JA business mentor. JA “alumni” are 43 percent more likely than their age cohort to start a business, and adults who as children participated in JA report an average household income 20 percent above the U.S. median.

The moral of the JA story? “Junior Achievement is not just a fun activity,” Race told breakfast attendees. “It fills a critical need for economic growth, the young people it serves and the communities they grow up in.”

Reach Michael C. Bingham at mbingham@newhavenbiz.com

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