- Theodore Vail, president of American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), and co-founder of Junior Achievement, 1918

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, sell, and balance the books. 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.

Before long, JA students were competing in regional expositions and trade fairs and rubbing elbows with top business leaders. By 1925, President Calvin Coolidge himself was hosting a reception on the White House lawn to kick off a national fundraising drive for 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. It didn't stop there, either.

JA After World War II

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 a specially lined box to carry off incendiary devices that was approved by the Civil Defense and sold locally; elsewhere, JA students made baby incubators, using acetylene torches in abandoned locomotive yards to obtain badly needed scrap iron.

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 JA a ccomplishments and 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 growth increased five-fold in the 1950s. In 1955, President Eisenhower declared January 30 to February 5 as National Junior Achievement Week. It didn't take long for JA operations to be up and running in 139 cities in most of the 50 states.

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, Reader's Digest editor, gave JA an additional boost in 1967 when he helped secure the magazine's support for an annual all-expenses paid, three-day student conference of the National Association of Junior Achievement Companies, or NAJAC. NAJAC became a mainstay of the Junior Achievement experience. With attendance nearing 3,000 students at its peak, NAJAC was billed to students as "The Best Week of Your Life." Students were treated to lively discussion groups and workshops with top business leaders and educators at NAJAC conferences.

Junior Achievement Today

In the early 1970s, Junior Achievement debuted its first in-school program, Project Business, for middle school students taught by volunteers. The popularity of Project Business was so tremendous that Junior Achievement soon debuted Business Basics, a curriculum for elementary schools taught by high school volunteers, themselves Junior Achievement participants. Demand for these new programs was overwhelming and the unique delivery system enabled Junior Achievement to serve many more children without a reduction in resources. As an organization, Junior Achievement had the vision that all children deserved, and could understand, economic education programming at all grade levels. Thus the curriculum as we know it, with its in-school delivery system, became the mainstay of Junior Achievements programming.

Today, through the generous support of contributors and more than 112,000 volunteers in U.S. classrooms, Junior Achievement reaches approximately 4 million students in grades K-12 per year. From its office in Colorado Springs, JA Worldwide supports nearly 150 area offices to deliver more than 20 programs to students nationwide. Its international affiliates take the free enterprise message of hope and opportunity even further, reaching a total of more than 8 million students in nearly 100 countries!

Junior Achievement of the National Capital Area

Junior Achievement's local office was founded and incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1965. In 1988, Junior Achievement, The Greater Washington Board of Trade, and The Washingtonian founded the prestigious Washington Business Hall of Fame, an awards dinner that honors five outstanding business leaders and entrepreneurs who, through their work, have made a significant contribution to the quality of life in the National Capital Area. Over the years, Junior Achievement has grown to serve nearly 40,000 K-12 students each year in over 20 counties and independent cities in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia - nearly 440,000 students since its founding!

Today, Junior Achievement's main office is located in downtown Washington, DC, with a newly-opened district office in Rockville, MD. In 2006, JA piloted a mobile version of a JA Finance Park facility in Fairfax County, VA; it was so successful that Junior Achievement is now in the planning stages of building a permanent facility in Fairfax.

Thank you for your interest in Junior Achievement!