Junior Achievement Marks 90 Years of Business Education

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report, from voaspecialenglish.com In two thousand nine, Junior Achievement marked its ninetieth anniversary of educating young people about business and economics. The nonprofit organization is the largest of its kind. Jack Kosakowsky is executive vice president. He says “We are the oldest business and economic education organization in the world. Were now serving nine-point-two million young people around the globe in one hundred twenty-three different countries.” Programs begin in elementary school and continue through middle and high school. The education is based on the ideas of market-based economics and entrepreneurship. Junior Achievement began in nineteen nineteen in Springfield, Massachusetts. Two business leaders, Horace Moses and Theodore Vail, joined with Senator Murray Crane of Massachusetts to start the group. For more than fifty years, Junior Achievement programs operated through clubs that met after school. But in nineteen seventy-five, JA also began to teach business skills during the school day. Volunteers from the community teach about businesses, how they are organized, and how products are made and sold. The volunteers also teach about the American and world economies and about industry and trade. The Junior Achievement Company Program teaches young people how entrepreneurship works. They learn about business by operating their own companies. Students develop a product and sell shares in their company. They …
Video Rating: 5 / 5