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.