Junior Achievement Partners with Taco Bell Foundation for Teens

To Raise S.C. Graduation Rates

COLUMBIA, SC – Junior Achievement USA^® and Taco Bell® Foundation for Teens™ announced a  partnership designed to arm high school students with the tools needed to graduate on time and enter the workforce. This collaboration merges  Junior Achievement’s mission of educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy with Taco Bell Foundation for Teens’ commitment to inspire and enable the country’s next generation of leaders. Junior Achievement of Central South Carolina is one of only thirteen JA area offices nationwide invited to participate in the first year of this partnership. Central S.C. area Taco Bell restaurants and high schools are encouraged to participate; many have already signed up.

JA Career Success is a Junior Achievement program designed to address specific needs of high school students today. Through the partnership with Taco Bell, this program is expected to reach many additional South Carolina students. JA Career Success features an interactive curriculum that teaches teens how to effectively conduct a job search, respond best to common interview questions, and positively build their “personal brand”—all to help teens reach their full potential and achieve a rewarding career. 

JA Career Success delivers both career exploration and work readiness skills through hands-on, interactive activities- including an accompanying digital app, JA Success Park™, which extends the student’s learning opportunity, allowing them to connect both within and beyond the classroom setting through interactive challenges. JA Success Park allows students to apply their knowledge of the 4Cs (critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity), best business practices, good customer service and conflict resolution. The JA Success Park app is designed for Android and iPad tablets and is free of charge on Google Play and Apple App Store.

The Taco Bell Foundation for Teens’ Graduate for Más program challenges teens to make a personal promise to graduate high school, using a digital platform. Once students are registered, they will receive information and inspiration to stay on track for school and future success. By staying active with Graduate for Más, students will earn points for prizes, once-in-a-lifetime experiences and educational support- including scholarships, job training and mentoring resources in their communities.

Junior Achievement’s partnership with Taco Bell’s Foundation for Teens strengthens their support to teens on their path to high school graduation, enriches the JA Career Success program while helping to close the graduation and workforce skills gap among high school students in South Carolina and throughout the U.S.

JA Career Success is a high school level program delivered through seven volunteer-taught sessions:

• Get Hired: Critical Thinking and Creativity. Students apply critical-thinking skills to solve problems in real-life work scenarios.
• Get Hired: Communication and Conflict Management Skills. Students apply communication skills to resolve conflicts in work-based scenarios through role playing and conflict management.
• Get Hired: Collaboration and Creativity. Students practice collaboration and creativity by using a team-building model referred to as the GRPI model (goals, roles & responsibilities, processes and interpersonal skills).
• Get Hired: Strong Soft Skills. Students review in-demand soft skills and rate their own abilities before presenting them through personal stories in a job-interview workshop.
• Know Your Work Priorities. Students learn that in the current workforce people change jobs or careers several times over a lifetime, making it important to be prepared and adaptable.
• Know Who’s Hiring. In groups, students analyze factors to consider when researching careers: skills earned through training and education; interests in various career clusters; and specific high-growth jobs and the requirements needed to earn them.
• Know Your Personal Brand. Students work in teams to rate the personal brand of candidates applying for a job by comparing cover letters, resumes and digital profiles of the candidates.

For more information on JA Career Success, visit www.ja.org. To learn more about the workforce skills gap, read Junior Achievement’s position paper.

About Junior Achievement

Junior Achievement motivates students to develop the skills needed to experience the realities and opportunities of the 21st-century global marketplace; developing the confidence to enter the workforce and contribute to economic growth.

Our program curriculum fosters work readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy skills, utilizing experiential learning to inspire kids to dream big and reach their potential.