Volunteering to Teach Adult Life Skills to Young People - Junior Achievement

The week before Thanksgiving, a group of 20 volunteers from IBM and our client Union Bank came together in the community to teach ninth graders from Southern California’s
Long Beach Polytechnic High School how to be adults for a day.

The event at Junior Achievement of Southern California’s Finance Park assigns an adult “life situation” to each student – including marital status, a number of children, an annual salary and a tax bracket. The students build a budget based on their adult role, and then go shopping for a home, a car, clothing, food for the family, and a list of other items from utilities to charitable giving. As the students make their tough choices and tradeoffs, they interact with our volunteers from the business world for a valuable learning experience.