PV Financial Volunteers for Junior Achievement

This past school year, three members of the PV Financial team, Kelly, Peter and Linda, served as volunteers for Junior Achievement at local schools around the community. Junior Achievement is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to own their economic success, plan for their futures, and make smart academic and economic choices. Junior Achievement’s programs—in the core content areas of work readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy—ignite the spark in young people to experience and realize the opportunities and realities of work and life in the 21st century.

Last month, Kelly had the opportunity to teach her son Ryan’s fourth-grade class about entrepreneurship at Soule Road School in Wilbraham. The kids learned through fun hands-on activities like running their own hot dog stand and creating/promoting their own businesses.

In March, Peter taught a class of 7th graders at Paul R. Baird Middle School for “JA in a Day”, a daylong event geared toward empowering young students to own their economic future and success, led by community volunteers and hands-on experiential learning. Pete has been actively involved with JA for several years and always enjoys spending the morning with the kids while helping them learn about financial literacy.

For five days, Linda volunteered in her son Dominic’s fifth-grade class about and taught topics related to the global economy at Veterans Park Elementary School in Ludlow. Some of the topics covered were working for a business vs. owning your own business, how a single product can have parts from all different countries, creating resumes, different types of job clusters, and the education/average salary for professions within job clusters.

Employees at Pioneer Valley Financial group are passionate about giving back to the community, especially when it comes to the youth. Junior Achievement has given us an avenue to use our financial expertise as a teaching tool in classrooms around the area. We look forward to volunteering again next year!