JA World - Fact Sheet

• JA World is a new vision of teaching and learning about American enterprise, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. It is a dynamic, experiential learning system with both a hands-on and curriculum approach in the classroom to prepare and inspire students for the future.
• Junior Achievement has built one JA World learning center in Auburn, and is currently building a second facility in Yakima, WA. JA World houses JA BizTown and JA Finance Park with both programs impacting a combined 25,000 students each year at full capacity.
• JA BizTown, a program for fifth graders, is an actual city run entirely by students who are engaged for a day as business owners, employees, consumers, and city officials. JA Finance Park, a program for eighth graders, focuses on personal financial skills such as budgeting, saving, and investing.
• Students prepare for six to eight weeks in the classroom before their daylong JA World practicum.
• The Boeing Company donated 5.5 acres for the "Boeing Center for Free Enterprise" phase 1 in Auburn, which opened November 16, 2004. The Temple Family of Yakima donated the land for JA World Yakima, expected to open to students and community members June 2011.
• The twenty-seven store fronts of JA BizTown and JA Finance Park in Auburn and Yakima are sponsored by actual area businesses. You can see these enterprise partners here
• Fifth and eight grade students experience the connection between hard work and tangible success, earning and learning; personal responsibility, leadership and team building; and the consequences and success of actual decision-making. Since opening its doors in 2004, almost 70,000 students experienced JA BizTown or JA Finance Park.