Junior Achievement of Southwest New England, Inc.

For nearly 100 years, Junior Achievement's purpose has been to educate and inspire young people to value free enterprise and understand business and economics to improve the quality of their lives. Our staff services 7 counties, including: Hartford, Litchfield, New Haven, Windham, Tolland, New London and Middlesex. Last year, more than 3,000 talented volunteers donated one of the most important things they have to offer...their time. These volunteers used their personal experiences to make the Junior Achievement curricula practical and realistic for more than 45,000 Connecticut students. 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.

Junior Achievement teaches and models integrity in our classrooms, the workplace, and all partnershi

Goal One: Provide robust, dynamic, and impactful programming that prepares students for success.

Goal Two: Be a true solution provider for Connecticut schools.

Goal Three: Explore additional high-impact programs that result in life-changing experiences for young people.

JA annually invites employees to attend JA USA’s national leadership program. In addition, our organization seeks out local training opportunities like Leadership Greater Hartford’s Quest and Executive Training programs for employees. JA also contracts with a consultant who provides leadership development, coaching, and other trainings for the organization’s senior leaders.

During a typical year, over 3,000 employee volunteers would enter the classrooms of over 50,000 Connecticut K-12 students, teach JA’s financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship programs, and share their mentorship and career expertise with the students. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, JA’s leadership made the safety and health of its staff and all partners its number one priority. All in-person programs were canceled in mid-March 2020. Between spring 2020 and spring 2022, JA has not had volunteers return to in-person programming to ensure the safety of all its partners. To continuing serving the needs of its students and community partners, JA embarked on an ambitious plan to fully develop digital and virtual programming for all K-12 curriculum for implementation. JA created 12 committees, which included staff members, board members, volunteers, educators, and alumni, to brainstorm our efforts. JA staff successfully virtualized all programs from elementary school JA in a Days to intensive JA Entrepreneurial Academies as well as created new delivery models and content such as Career Days and the JA Speaker Series. Because JA volunteers were not able to enter the classroom, JA created a menu of flexible options for volunteers that includes career panel webinars, pre-recording short JA lessons or other videos, “beaming” into a class via live video conferencing, and more. Despite the constraints on the 2020-21 school year, nearly 100 percent of all JA programming included engaging volunteer involvement for students. Now, JA is a true solution provider, not just a program provider. We recognize the need to be nimble and offer flexible opportunities to meet our educators and corporate partners where they are. With impact as our main driver, JA listens attentively to our constituents and tailors rewarding experiences that meet the needs of our students, our educators and our business partners.