A Pathways to Financial Literacy, Career Readiness, and Entrepreneurship for High School Students empowers students in the tri-state area by offering a clear and coordinated strategies for financial literacy, career awareness, and work readiness enlisting evidence-based best practices in the field of financial education. The pathways to financial literacy model evolves from the kindergarten level using a continuum of “building blocks”. Employing traditional classroom programs led by community and corporate volunteers, the interactive Inspire to Hire career expo, Job Shadowing, and the financial literacy semester course meet the needs of local high school students. Through these programs they build their financial decision-making knowledge and skills. As our young people make more informed financial choices, their chances to success improve. In addition, a new component of the high school programming in 2023-24 will be the I-Gen Program for young innovators in partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center..
Program Goals:
Goal 1: Each of the traditional classroom programs has its own goal and objectives. Generally, the goal of Junior Achievement is to educate students about financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship through experiential, hands-on programs led by volunteers in the classroom.
Objective 1: The JA traditional classroom programs (ongoing) will be delivered to students, 9-12, using community volunteers to teach the classes during the 2023-24 school year. The success of the program will be measured using the testing tools developed by JA USA for each program. Volunteers or teachers generally administer the tests. JA will recruit and train volunteers from businesses to serve as mentors for students in the high school traditional programs. JA expects to serve over 500 students with traditional programming at the high school level.
JA Events 9-12th (extended to include 7th - 12th)
JA Inspire to Hire career expo - Inspire to Hire brings together the business community and local schools and is designed to help launch students into their futures: college, military, and careers. Who better to excite and educate students about career opportunities than the employers who will be hiring them.
Goal 2: Inspire to Hire will provide career guidance while engaging students with local businesses.
Objective 2: 3500-4000 high school students will attend Inspire to Hire in March of 2024. They will complete pre-classes before attending and complete a survey post-event that will be used to evaluate the success of the event and plan for the future.
JA Job Shadow prepares students to be entrepreneurial thinkers in their approach to work. In-class sessions prepare students for a visit to a professional work environment, where they will face a series of challenges administered by their workplace hosts. Students learn how to research career opportunities and the skills needed to land and keep their dream job. Job Shadowing for CPS usually takes place in April.
I-Gen (Innovation Generation) in partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center - The I-Gen program was designed by JA OKI using JA Be Entrepreneurial as the core of the new program. Students from around 20 classrooms will visit the Made in Cincinnati exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center to kick-off the program. While at the Museum, they will take a class describing the history of innovation. After completing the 5-lesson Be Entrepreneurial program with a volunteer in their own classrooms, there will be a competition in the spring to showcase the best innovation from each school at an expo at the Museum Center. This is a new program for JA OKI. Participating classrooms will take JA Be Entrepreneurial in the winter or spring and prepare their presentations for late spring. Cincinnati Public Schools have already committed to enroll 10 classes.
Goal 3: Engage 20 -25 classrooms or around 400-500 students from underserved schools to participate in an exciting entrepreneurial experience.
Program Results:
The primary goal for the 2023-24 school year was to increase financial literacy, career readiness, and entrepreneurial educational learning experiences for middle and high school students in the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont in Ohio and Boone, Kenton and Campbell in Northern Kentucky. In addition, JA was monitoring the impact of these programs through watching trends as they developed through PowerBI reporting (see attachments), student surveys, teacher testimonials, and volunteer classroom testing. All data for 2023-24 traditional classes has not been verified yet. The initial numbers show that over 2,000 (7-12th grade students) received training in work readiness, financial literacy, and/or entrepreneurship in the 2023-24 school year in Hamilton County alone. These numbers do not include students attending I-Gen or Inspire to Hire. We originally anticipated that there would be around 500, 9th - 12th grade students participating in JA's traditional classes. Even without the 7th and 8th graders, this number was exceeded. Over 70 volunteer mentors taught many of those programs. A few educators chose to teach their own JA classes.
The inaugural year of the I-Gen (innovation generation) program in partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center began in the fall of 2023. The program, engaging students in entrepreneurial learning activities and lessons, served 28 classrooms (525 students) from 22 schools of primarily underserved students. The follow-up Innovation Fair was held at the Museum Center on February 3, 2024. Students from 12 schools displayed and presented their innovative ideas to a group of volunteer entrepreneurs that provided feedback. Enthusiasm for the program to continue in 2024-25 was overwhelming. Next year, the majority of schools involved will still be underserved, but a few additional schools were invited to attend as well. The program consists of a field trip to the Museum Center where students experience a class on local innovators and a tour of the Made in Cincinnati exhibit, 5 classroom lessons on entrepreneurship led by a volunteer, and the finale Innovation Fair where a school's top team presents their innovation.
Inspire to Hire at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center March 5-6, did not disappoint. With 58 schools in attendance and 4,700 students participating over two days, 60 exhibitors including 300 volunteers interacted with the students, coaching them about jobs available in the career sectors they represented. For 120 minutes, students had the chance to interact in hands-on exploration of the region's in-demand jobs. Inspire to Hire serves as a pipeline between young people and companies that will need talent when students complete their education.
Another capstone program for Junior Achievement was the Stock Market Challenge held at Cincinnati State on April 24. After three classroom sessions, students from Greater Cincinnati Schools schools competed in teams of 3-4 (or remotely) as they reenacted 60 trading days on the stock market floor. Their object, to build their portfolio and achieve the highest worth in an hour of trading. There were 310 live participants and 61 engaged virtually. The winning team from the stock Marker live event was Oyler School from Cincinnati Public Schools. This was their second victory in three years.
An additional program serving the middle schools was United for Teen Financial Literacy in partnership with United Way of Greater Cincinnati and 240 of their volunteers who delivered lessons on budgeting to all Cincinnati Public School 7th graders (around 2,100). (These numbers were not included in the traditional classroom numbers.)
: June 2023
