Junior Achievement, founded in 1919, is the world's largest and fastest-growing non-profit economic education organization in the world! It reaches approximately 4 million students in over 10 countries.

        Junior Achievement of Michiana serves Berrien and Cass counties in Michigan, and Laporte, St. Joseph, and Marshall Counties in Indiana (with the exception of Michigan City, which is served by JA of Northern Indiana). Funded locally by area businesses, foundations, service clubs, and individuals, JA of Michiana partners with local organizations, schools, and businesses to prepare tomorrow's workforce. JA's programs, developed by educators to national standards, also meet current state educational, MEAP and ISTEP requirements. [See Curriculum Correlations for Michigan and Curriculum Correlations for Indiana for details.]

       Though the kits, materials, and lesson plans are standard for each grade level and come from the Worldwide JA organization, each program is unique because local volunteer business consultants bring the day-to-day reality of their work experience into the classroom. Suddenly, abstact economic concepts become understandable and interesting to students in Kintergarden through 12th Grade, because the volunteer is relating those concepts to their own families, their own towns, their own futures!

       As Mark Eagan, former Executive Director of the St. Joseph County Chamber of Commerce, so succinctly stated recently, "Junior Achievement is one method by which a community can foster an entrepreneurial culture and thereby ensure a vibrant local economy in the future."