Taking Care of Business: How Junior Achievement Builds the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs

Should used plastic utensils be recycled or thrown away? Those trying to be good eco-citizens by answering recycled would be wrong. Due to their small size, they actually need to be tossed out.

“You and 88 percent of other people do not know that,” says Carter Hall, sales vice president for Waste Wars, a company within the Junior Achievement Company Program. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Waste Wars is a card game that teaches players how to improve and protect the environment through proper recycling and composting, preventative measures such as turning out the lights when leaving a room and more. The game costs $10, and is produced, marketed and sold by a JA Company Program group based out of Canton’s GlenOak High School.

“Our teachers told us that it was more important to find a problem, and when we found that 88 percent of the youth don’t know how to recycle and things like that — and we found many other stats that really surprised us,” says Waste Wars vice president Patrick Arway, “it showed us that teaching people how to help … would be a great step.”

Those behind Waste Wars have taken their message into local classrooms, where, through presentations and activities, they teach kids to be more ecologically mindful.

“We also sell our teacher packages, which is our main source of revenue from these schools,” says Nico Codispoti, Waste Wars chief executive officer. “We package eight games together for only $60.”

Launched by a group of businesspeople in 1919, Junior Achievement is an international organization that aims to teach students about business. The three pillars are work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. Its JA Company Program does that by allowing them to run their own small businesses while in school. Students who are part of Junior Achievement of North Central Ohio take it as part of a semester- or school year-long business class in their participating school, taught by a teacher with support from a Junior Achievement volunteer.

“We are working through these programs to help students to develop the skill sets and the mindsets that they need to thrive in life,” says Joshua Lehman, president of Junior Achievement of North Central Ohio. “With the Company Program, it is an entrepreneurship journey. It’s a chance for these students to literally build a business over the course of a school year.”

The focus of Junior Achievement as a whole is economic mobility and opportunities for the students it serves, says Jenn Scheeser, JA Company Program manager.

“We have other programs for younger students and all that are more about theory of entrepreneurship, but in this one, they actually form a company, come up with a product or service,” says Scheeser of the JA Company Program, which also involves classwork like worksheets and quizzes to supplement the experience-based curriculum. “They’re out there selling it. They are using presentation skills constantly. They are managing a bank account. They are managing financial documents. It’s all through that that they’re truly learning life skills.”

Participating JA Company Program schools this year include Akron Public Schools’ Ellet Community Learning Center, Barberton High School, North Canton Hoover High School, Aurora High School, Kent’s Theodore Roosevelt High School and more.

“The greatest value in this program is that it is real life and hands-on,” Scheeser says. “There’s a curriculum, where they study vocabulary and study methods and things like that, and they do that in their classroom, but in most things, they truly learn the most by doing. They learn the fundamentals of building a business.”

Another JA Company Program company, Brave Minds, hails from Jackson High School near Massillon — and sells boxes of supportive materials for military veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“All of us, we’ve had veterans in our family,” says Gavin Black, Brave Minds vice president and chief operating officer. “My uncle was a veteran. My dad’s dad was a veteran.”

One group member knew a veteran who had served in the military for 10 to 15 years. After living with PTSD, he died by suicide.

“We really wanted to do something not only to impact us locally, we want to do it nationally,” Black says. “This could really impact and help people in the future.”

Boxes include a journal, a fidget pen, a shaker bottle, gym trial passes, a lavender aromatherapy satchel, a resistance band and more.

“We’ve done lots of research … we have a couple veterans that work at Jackson High School that we’ve talked to, so we really try to pitch that and talk about what steps we’ve taken and what we are trying to accomplish,” Black says. “Not only can you purchase our kit to give it to someone, you can buy a kit to donate it to someone.”

Junior Achievement alumni are 143 percent more likely to start their own business than the general population.

“These experiences are so hands-on, so realistic,” Lehman says. “It is helping them to develop these skill sets and mindsets that help drive economic mobility and opportunities.”

Whether students decide to start their own businesses after graduation — or just take the skills they’ve developed through the program into their careers of choice — the goal of the program is to help students thrive, Lehman says.

“Junior Achievement is a really good opportunity for anyone,” says Amina Salem, who does marketing and public relations for Waste Wars. “Having business skills helps with any career.”

Codispoti says he would widely recommend the program.

“Everything right now in the world is a business,” he says. “If you don’t want to go into business, that’s OK, but it’s also a great way to learn teamwork, which is a part of everything, of course. And so, there’s so many different skills you can learn, like talking to people, talking in front of people. It’s invaluable.”

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