Junior Achievement Teaches Business Skills to Young People (1/2)

Junior Achievement is an international movement to educate young people about business and economics. The purpose is to help them prepare to succeed in a world economy.

The organization is the largest of its kind. JA Worldwide says it reaches about seven and one-half million students each year in nearly 100 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 1919 in Springfield, Massachusetts. 2 business leaders, Horace Moses and Theodore Vail, joined with Senator Murray Crane of Massachusetts to start it.

For more than 50 years, Junior Achievement programs met after school. They began as a group of business clubs. The organization started with a small number of children ages 10 to 12. But in 1975, Junior Achievement began to offer classes during school hours. Many more young people joined the organization once it began to teach business skills as part of the school day.