JA Americas Initiatives Help Young

One of the largest non-governmental organizations serving youth around the world, the JA Worldwide network has over 100 member countries and more than 470,000 mentors and volunteers. As a member of this network, JA Americas creates pathways and provides young people with skills that facilitate employability, job creation, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. JA Americas inspires and prepares youth to excel in a global economy through several initiatives that combine volunteers' interventions and digital components.

JA's core initiatives are developed for students in grades K-12, as well as those who are out of school. The blended model is hands-on, and 60 percent of JA America's initiatives include digital components, such as e-shops modules and e-learning platforms, along with interventions from volunteers. The JA Innovation Camp is an example of one such initiative, and engages 15- to 18-year-old students for half a day or a whole day in an intensive learning experience that offers opportunities in collaborative and entrepreneurial learning. JA Innovation Camps use a team-based approach to encourage students to discover solutions for challenges in their communities or business sectors. To this end, students utilize tools such as design thinking and CANVAS, a strategic tool used for developing and documenting business models.

Another JA initiative is Latin Code Week, an 18-hour introductory course on design thinking, soft skills, business skills, and prototyping. During Latin Code Week, students learn more about the tools they need to thrive in the current market. Additionally, this initiative features an innovation camp where students have the opportunity to propose solutions for specific social or business challenges by prototyping an app.

Women between 18 and 25 years of age who are in risky and vulnerable situations due to access to education, geographic location, delinquency, or gender may join the Women for Development program. This initiative by JA aims to introduce participants to relevant life and business skills and teach them more about loans and how to access this type of credit to create or grow their businesses. In this program, JA partners with microcredit organizations that facilitate access to loans for participants.

The EmpleaTECH initiative was created in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank, which, together with JA Americas, combined the Latin Code Week and a training program for the SAP product Business One, which is a small business management software. EmpleaTECH empowers youth with business, soft, and ITC skills while also enabling them to be hired as B1 consultants. In addition, another JA partner, ManpowerGroup, provides opportunities for participants of this program to join the job market.

Finally, the Google IT Support Certificate initiative focuses on training 2,000 people between 18 and 29 years old to receive professional certificates in IT support from Google. The target audience of this initiative is those facing vulnerable situations, such as people who are in informal jobs or unemployed, who receive less than the minimum wage, or who are in excluded groups. In addition to providing participants with Internet access and devices, the initiative has partners that help these young people enter the computer support job market. The Google IT Support Certificate course requires no prior knowledge or experience, only completion of high school.

Giving to the BU Foundation

The Binghamton University Foundation is the fundraising partner of Binghamton University. It is dedicated to managing and investing donations to develop excellence in teaching and research, create more high-impact learning experiences for Binghamton University students, enhance facilities, and provide support for the university's needs, initiatives, and programs. As part of its mission, the foundation educates about charitable giving and matches donors' philanthropic intentions with the university's fundraising priorities.

For example, one scholarship that donors have been helping to fund is the George Floyd Scholarship for Social Change. President Harvey Stenger established this scholarship during George Floyd's memorial service in June 2020 to award underrepresented and historically economically disadvantaged minorities. Students selected for the George Floyd Scholarship for Social Change receive $5,000 per year for a maximum of 3 years. In total, the foundation designated $1.5 million to establish this endowment. Five students have been awarded for the 2020-21 academic year.

Donors can also choose to focus their donations on the Binghamton Fund for Excellence, the Binghamton Fund for Opportunity Scholarships, a specific school or college, or other areas of campus. For instance, the Binghamton Fund for Excellence creates opportunities that help every student in the university. As an example, in 2020, this fund purchased the technology that students needed during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped provide emergency scholarships for those who had the greatest needs, and advanced meaningful student research.

The Binghamton Fund for Opportunity Scholarships helps the university recruit and preserve excellent students, regardless of their financial situations, by creating scholarships. In addition, each school and college dean has access to an account that they can use when they need flexible funds to react to challenges and opportunities quickly. Donors can support a specific school or college by donating directly to its fund. It is also possible to donate to areas such as the campus libraries, research and technology, graduate studies, the Anderson Center for the Performing Arts, and the Binghamton University Art Museum.

Those interested in giving to the Binghamton University Foundation can either visit binghamton.edu/foundation to donate online using their credit cards, or mail checks to the foundation's physical address. It is also possible to visit the Binghamton University Foundation's Gift and Donor Records office to make a cash gift; donate stocks and securities via electronic transfer, registered mail, or in person; or give the foundation an electronic funds transfer permission, which allows it to automatically withdraw a specific amount from the donor's checking account every month.

Other giving options include making a matching gift with your employer, gifting real estate or personal property, including a charitable donation in your financial and estate plans, or filling out a form for payroll deduction (in the case of those who are members of the faculty and staff at the university). In the fiscal year of 2019-2020, the Binghamton University Foundation raised a total of $54,279,418 in cash and $695,991 in deferred gifts, gifts in kind, and Research Foundation grants. The total amount, $54,975,409, was over three times larger than the gifts received in the fiscal year of 2018-2019, which was $15,209,399.