Founded by Horace Moses, Theodore Vail, and Sen. Murray Crane of Massachusetts, Junior Achievement started in
1919 as a collection of small, after-school business clubs for students in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The consensus was that Junior Achievement was right for the times.
As the rural-to-city exodus of the populace accelerated, so too did the demand for workforce preparation and
entrepreneurship. Students were taught how to think and plan for a business, acquire supplies and talent, build
their own products, advertise, and sell. With the financial support of companies and individuals, Junior
Achievement next recruited sponsoring agencies such as New England Rotarians, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts,
Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA, and numerous settlement houses, churches, playground associations, and schools to
provide meeting places for the students.
In a few short years JA students were competing in regional expositions and trade fairs and rubbing elbows with
top business leaders. By 1925 President Calvin Coolidge hosted a reception on the White House lawn to kick off
a national fund-raising drive for Junior Achievement's expansion, and by the late 1920s there were nearly 800 JA
Clubs with some 9,000 Achievers in 13 cities in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
JA During World War II and Beyond
During World War II, enterprising students in JA business clubs used
their ingenuity to find new and different products for the war
effort. In Chicago, JA students won a contract to manufacture 10,000
pants hangers for the U.S. Army; In Pittsburgh, JA students made
specially lined boxes to carry off incendiary devices that were
approved by the Civil Defense and sold locally. Elsewhere, JA students made baby incubators.
They even obtained badly needed scrap iron by using acetylene torches in abandoned locomotive yards.
Leading executives of the day such as S. Bayard Colgate, James Cash Penney, Joseph Sprang of Gillette, and
others helped the organization grow rapidly in the 1940s. Stories of Junior Achievement's accomplishments and
that of its students soon appeared in national magazines of the day such as TIME, Young America, Colliers, LIFE,
the Ladies Home Journal, and Liberty.
Working closely with schools, Junior Achievement grew rapidly in the 1950s, increasing five-fold. In 1955,
President Eisenhower declared January 30 to February 5 as National Junior Achievement Week. It didn't take long
for Junior Achievement operations to be up and running in 139 cities in most of the 50 states.
In fact, during its first 45 years of existence Junior Achievement enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 45
percent!
Junior Achievement's profile continued to rise when in 1962 former Governor of Connecticut John Davis Lodge
became the organization's president. Long-time JA sponsor DeWitt Wallace, then editor of Reader's Digest, gave
JA an additional boost in 1967 when he helped secure the magazine's support to help fund an annual,
all-expenses-paid, three-day student conference of the National Association of Junior Achievement Companies, or
NAJAC. At each conference, students were treated to lively discussion groups and workshops with top business
leaders and educators. To this day, former JA students who attended NAJAC say the experience was one of the
best weeks of their lives.
To further connect students to role models of the day, in 1975 Junior Achievement started the National Business
Hall of Fame. NBHF recognizes outstanding business leaders. By 1982, Junior Achievement's formal curricula
offering had expanded to Applied Economics (now called JA Economics), Project Business, and Business Basics.
In 1988, more than one million students per year were estimated to take part in Junior Achievement programs.
In the early 1990s, a sequential curricula for grades K-6 was launched catapulting the organization into the
classrooms of another 1 million elementary school students.
The Organization As We Know It Today
Today, through the generous support of contributors and more than 113,000 volunteers in U.S. classrooms, Junior
Achievement reaches approximately 4 million students in grades K-12 per year. From its national office in
Colorado Springs, Junior Achievement supports 150 area offices to deliver 24 programs to students nationwide.
Its International Affiliate takes the free enterprise message of hope and opportunity even further...to more
than 1.2 million students in more than 100 countries!
And so Junior Achievement starts the 21st century true to its roots but ready to help students meet the fresh
challenges of the New Economy. In February of 2000, JA, along with Lycos, launched a real-time business
simulation for high school students called JA TITAN.
More recently, in May of 2000 CNBC broadcast a special show on the 2000 Junior Achievement National Business
Hall of Fame called "Legacy of Leadership."
What else is happening? Junior Achievement has begun work on a Web-based simulation called JA Personal Finance
to increase students' financial literacy. We continue to work closely with Monster.com, School-to-Work, the
American Society of Association Executives, and America's Promise to host the rapidly growing Groundhog Job
Shadow Day program each February 2nd.
Over the years, the story of Junior Achievement has been one of inspiring student potential. Thankfully, that
hasn't changed.
Thank you for your interest in Junior Achievement.
