"Junior Achievement is passionate people inspiring and preparing young people to succeed in a global economy."

Description:
Junior Achievement is a volunteer driven, non-profit organization. This year more than 500 Western New York business professionals, parents, retirees and college students will enter our schools to teach Junior Achievement programs. These volunteers use their personal experiences to make the Junior Achievement curricula practical and realistic. Providing children with positive adult role models, who illustrate ways to build self-confidence, develop skills and find avenues of success in our free enterprise system, is a hallmark of Junior Achievement.

History:
Junior Achievement of WNY, Inc. was founded in 1957 as Junior Achievement of the Niagara Frontier. Currently, JA of WNY covers eight counties and runs programs in over 100 area schools and community sites. Until 1975, JA consisted of an after-school program in which students, under the direction of a business community volunteer, ran small mock companies that produced "widgets and wares" for sale at JA trade shows. In 1975, Junior Achievement developed in-school economic education programs for students in grades 7-12. Recent years have seen the development and growth of JA's K-6 programs. The curriculum is designed in a sequential manner, each building on the concepts learned and practiced in the previous lesson.

Junior Achievement programs were, and continue to be, taught by volunteers from the business community, called JA consultants. Today, Junior Achievement places consultants in over 600 area classrooms each year, teaching over 12,000 students how business works. The demand for quality businessmen and women in the classroom has never been greater, and the demand for our programs far outweighs our ability to implement them. Aside from funding these programs, our ability to recruit volunteers is our greatest challenge.

Nationally founded in 1919, Junior Achievement is today the world's largest and fastest growing non-profit organization with programs running in over 112 countries around the globe. Our mission is to ensure that every child in America has a fundamental understanding of the free enterprise system. With the help of our many dedicated volunteers Junior Achievement is able to work towards this goal as we move into the future.

Contact person: Alycia Ivancie, Senior Program Manager, (phone), (email)
Office fax number: (716) 853-1385

Address:

275 Oak Street, Suite 222 Buffalo, NY 14203 (See a map)