Students in the Poland School District operate a company that sells the district’s sports athletic wear, items like T-shirts and sweatshirts.

Students at Canfield Local School District operate a popular coffee house before the school day begins, and students right now at Girard Intermediate and Champion Middle schools also are learning skills that will set them up for economic success.

It’s all through Junior Achievement of Eastern Ohio, the former Junior Achievement of Mahoning Valley, an organization that trains youth in grades kindergarten through 12 in work readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

Junior Achievement is marking its 70th anniversary in the Mahoning Valley this year, and has evolved from the JA company program best known for its serving trays, cookie sheets and coat hanger products to a comprehensive school curriculum and related workshops, college fairs and other events.

GROWTH

Junior Achievement has existed in Trumbull and Mahoning counties as a singular organization since 1952, when the Trumbull County office, where the Handyman Hardware store exists today on Elm Road NE, and the Youngstown office on Market Street merged to become Junior Achievement Mahoning Valley.

Then, said President Michele Merkel, it was just the one program, the JA company program, an after-school program that had students pair up with a business mentor, usually from a manufacturing company to either manufacture or sell a product.

“We did have some of that heavy equipment that was provided by the larger companies that was in our offices, where they could have those printing presses; others, there was a relationship where the company did make some of those products and supplied the students, but they were 100 percent in charge of running the company,” Merkel said.

The JA company exists today, but it’s different. Around the 1980s is when liability insurance and safety regulations came into play — “kids can’t use manufacturing equipment because of the liability,” Merkel said — so Junior Achievement’s national office shifted toward in-school programming for all grade levels that teaches work readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

The company program transitioned from an after-school program to an in-school one as a full semester courses taught by teachers.

Under it, students open a bank account under the Junior Achievement umbrella, select officers and determine a product and raise startup capital in one of two ways — sell fictitious stocks or pitch to Junior Achievement’s board of directors for a loan to start the company.

Under the stock option, students must decide whether to repay shareholders with profits or they go into the community or into the community. Typically, Merkel said, the profits goes to a local organization or an item is bought for their school.

If they ask for a loan, up to $600, sometimes board members apply interest and it needs to be closed before the business account is closed, which is one nine-week semester.

The company program is what Poland and Canfield students use to run their apparel and coffee companies.

In the works now with Choffin Career and Technical Center in Youngstown is to help bring back a miniature marketplace cafe, Merkel said.

The organization’s role grew with state mandates on work readiness and soft skills because school districts sought Junior Achievement’s programming in those areas to comply. There was a lot of interest for the middle school career exploration program, she said.

It presents career clusters and instruction on whether the student needs to continue their education, if a trade school is applicable or if they need a certification.

“We look at in the eighth grade further in those job careers as far was what the could be making financially, what might be some of those issues that prevent them from furthering their education. That could be grades, that could be financial issues, not having access to some of these programs,” Merkel said.

Those programs — JA My Future and JA Economics for Success — became strong that many schools in the region use, Merkel said.

REACH

The organization is able to reach 3,000 to 4,000 students at the elementary, middle and high school levels “because we want to make sure we have that continued pathway,” Merkel said.

The elementary program, which is kindergarten to fifth grade, are themed programs and grade-level specific with all three components: financial literacy, work readiness / soft skills and entrepreneurship.

It starts with an introduction to money concepts and learning about the role they play in their families in kindergarten and rolls into families in first grade to community businesses in second grade. Programs in the other grades focus on city, region, nation and global marketplace.

“Once they hit middle and high school, the programs aren’t specific necessarily to that grade level, so a seventh grade teacher can use the eighth grade program or vice versa,” Merkel said. “One might be strictly work readiness, one might be strictly financial and one might be an entrepreneurship program.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the national Junior Achievement started to transition to online blended programs taught by teachers away from the kit-based volunteer-taught program. When the pandemic hit, Junior Achievement was seeing high demand because of the change in learning to online, so the national organization made the full curriculum online accessible, Merkel said.

Its role expanded again with the introduction of another state mandate, this one about financial education that requires 60 hours of teacher-taught financial literacy programming as a graduation requirement.

“We already had it,” Merkel said, and all that was needed was to go through the program with the required standards to find the holes.

National Junior Achievement was able to add pieces to it to meet the standards. The result is the JA Ohio Financial Literacy Program because it is specific to Ohio and mandates.

All of the curriculums are free; there is no charge to the school districts to access them.

DELIVERY

The elementary curriculum is presented once per week over five lessons or in what’s called JA in a Day, where the district gives the organization a school day. In high school, a lot of the programs are a full semester and taught by teachers often with a subject matter expert who will attend to supplement the course.

That could be a person to talk about buying a car to investing to checking and savings accounts, Merkel said.

The local organization also helped stand up a college and local trade fair and works with the Cafaro Company to have youth market days at the mall. Part of that is the JA Start My Business workshop, a free learning workshop aims to guide students through the process of starting and operating their own small businesses.

Participants are selected from that to sell their product or service to the public. This year’s market day is noon to 3 p.m. Nov. 5 at the mall.

The locally developed JA Innovation program mostly for middle school students. Under it, the students partner with a local business to develop and bring an item to market, Merkel said,

One partner was Pizza Joe’s to develop a new type of pizza the company agreed to market and sell for a period of time. The first year, a Philly Bulldog pizza developed by students at Lakeview Local School District, made PMQ, a national pizza magazine.

Officials from Conneaut School District saw the program and fell in love with it, wanting to do it for their sixth-, seventh- and eighth- graders. The program was tweaked to Dairy Queen and Blizzards. At a community day, the public can purchase the ice cream treat and vote, with the winner being able to sell the product for a month, Merkel said.

The proceeds are donated back to Junior Achievement and the school.

SOME OF WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW

Champion Middle School is running programs for students in fifth to eighth grades. The seventh-grade program, which just finished, was the “It’s My Future” program, which Joanna Feathers, program manager with the local Junior Achievement, provides the work readiness and soft skills.

“They develop personal branding and job hunting skills needed to secure a job, research potential careers, and create a resume, just to name a few examples,” she wrote in an email.

At Girard Intermediate School, students are working through the “Global Marketplace,” which introduces students to the global marketplace and ways countries buy and sell from each other, according to Feathers.

Pam Baker is a guidance counselor at the school on East Prospect Street. She has been affiliated with the local Junior Achievement for more than two decades, and, in fact, introduced the program to the district when she was hired 23 years ago.

“I’m very happy with the program,” said Baker. “I feel it not only covers the standards, but it really provides some life skills in helping children understand about business and money, economy, culture,” she said. “There are so many aspects of how it goes through domestic trade, then global trade. It starts with the region and then moves all the way through, and it really is a good stepping stone for each grade level, helping them understand in a way that makes sense to them and also in a way that makes it realistic to them.”