In 2009, OppenheimerFunds directed funding and recruited internal employee volunteers for Junior Achievement (JA) Business Week and the JA Classroom Program in Colorado.

Junior Achievement Business Week
Junior Achievement Business Week is an annual, one-of-a-kind summer program that lets high school students experience the business world, develop leadership skills and focus on the future. 

During this one-week “crash-course” in business, students have the opportunity to learn about business from industry professionals while working in teams on an “Apprentice”-styled project.  In addition to meeting new friends from across Colorado and Wyoming, camp participants get a taste of college life by living on a university campus for the week and having the opportunity to find out more about themselves and their futures.  In 2009, 141 students participated in the camp and five OFI volunteers served as advisors to the teams.

Junior Achievement Classroom Program
Junior Achievement classroom programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace.  Students put these lessons into action by taking the concepts they learn about business in the classroom and implementing them into their everyday lives.  Elementary school programs include seven sequential themes for kindergarten through sixth-grade students where they learn how business, economics and education are relevant to the workplace.

The programs continue through middle school and high school, where the focus turns to entrepreneurship, workforce readiness and financial literacy. Throughout JA’s programs students use information, apply basic skills, think critically and solve complex problems while learning the value of contributing to their communities.

JA’s unique approach allows volunteers from the business community to deliver the curriculum while sharing their personal experiences with students.  Embodying the heart of JA, the 287,000 classroom volunteers nationwide transform the key concepts of the lessons into a message that inspires and empowers students to believe in themselves, showing them that they can make a difference in the world.

JA reached 94,531 children in over 487 schools throughout metro Denver, Northern Colorado and Wyoming during the 2008/09 school year. To accomplish this, they mobilized over 3,190 dedicated, well-trained volunteers.  This included a significant number of OppenheimerFunds employees, who taught JA programs in 28 classrooms to 605 students with varied socio-economic backgrounds in grades kindergarten through 12. 

For more information about Junior Achievement, visit their website, www.jacolorado.org

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