Junior Achievement Wants YOU To Help Shape Students Futures
After reaching a record number of students in Brevard County in 2022-2023, Junior Achievement of the Space Coast has not stopped for a breath. With more than 19,000 students on the Space Coast benefitting from our volunteer-led, classroom learning experiences last year, coupled with a highly competitive JA team that's already committed to increasing that number in 2023-2024, the focus is on the secret ingredient that makes it successful: volunteers.
Prior to the dreaded pandemic, volunteering for organizations like JA during the workday was a great way to skip out of the office for a few hours. Employees liked the break to do something meaningful, employers liked the impact on the community, and students liked the experiential activities and hearing from “real-world” examples.
Skip forward a few years and a large part of the workforce is working remotely. So getting out of comfy pajamas and getting dressed to go volunteer isn’t as appealing as it once was. We get it. But our students need you. Now more than ever.
The JA mission is simple; to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy. We envision a world in which young people have the skillset and mindset to build thriving communities. Our JA learning experiences — covering financial literacy, work readiness and entrepreneurship — are relevant and fun to deliver.
Whether you’re spending a morning in a 1st grade classroom, sharing JA Our Families programming with 6- and 7-year-olds who want to be your best friend, or helping middle school students understand the correlation between their career and lifestyle goals (talk about eye-opening) with JA Economics for Success, sharing YOUR personal and professional experience is where the magic happens.
Making that connection for the students and helping them apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to life outside the classroom makes all the difference in the world.
Do you know what dieticians, carpenters, air traffic controllers and jewelry makers have in common? They all use algebra. If you were sharing our JA Career Success curriculum with a class of high school students, they would know just how much math you do and that could help dictate their career paths.
Volunteering with JA is easy:
- Pick a school, pick a classroom, pick an area of the county.
- Pick a one-and-done delivery, a full school-day delivery or a traditional delivery (6-9 weekly visits for 1 class period).
- Do it alone, take a friend or coworker or get your whole company to sign up.
Are you a small business? Great, pick a grade level at a local elementary school.
Big company? Awesome, pick an entire elementary school and do a JA DAY.
Unsure of where you’ll feel comfortable? How about signing up for our JA Career Speaker Series in a high school and spend 30 minutes talking about yourself and how you got to where you are now. Students LOVE that.
Want to have an even bigger impact on young lives? Deliver a more comprehensive JA program like JA Be Entrepreneurial and help students create a product or service and beam with pride as they pitch it in teams at the JA Balda Family Foundation Social Innovation Challenge.
Or, new this year, deliver our JA Take Stock In Your Future program and help students discover the world of investing. They’ll take those skills all the way to the Crowne Plaza in November for a capstone experience in a stock market simulation. Sixty minutes of fast paced high stakes stock market floor trading representing 60 days of the market.
Brevard County students are extraordinarily bright, and with you as a volunteer delivering JA’s award-winning material, the sky is the limit for their boundless possibilities.
Get Involved
Contact JA’s education and volunteer coordinator at bianca@jaspacecoast.org or visit www.jaspacecoast.org to get started.
Meet Our Thought Leader
Candice Hodge is vice president of education at Junior Achievement of the Space Coast where she has spent over a decade breaking down barriers to opportunity and promoting inclusive growth. She enjoys giving back to the community and serves on the boards of Children's Homes Society and Keep Brevard Beautiful. She's also a guardian ad litem for the 18th Judicial Circuit, helping ensure the best interests of children are being represented in court. When she's not trying to save the world, you can find her on the beach.
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