 Welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I am Daelyn Yanagida and we're broadcasting live from the ThinkTech Studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are live at www.thinktechhawaii.com. You may also subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list there as well. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people and our guests share with us how they were able to build successes in our challenging environment. In the ThinkTech studio with us today is Tiffany Yoshida. Tiffany is the interim president of Junior Achievement of Hawaii. Tiffany, I'm super excited to have you here. You know that Junior Achievement is near and dear to my heart and I'm super excited for you to tell our viewers about Junior Achievement and its presence in Hawaii. So go ahead and start and tell us about Junior Achievement and then the Hawaii chapter of Junior Achievement. Thank you, Daelyn. Thank you for having me. Junior Achievement of Hawaii has an incredible mission which is to inspire and prepare young people for success in a global community. And I think through our education and our curriculum, we're teaching kids grades K through 12 about just financial literacy, financial management, and just how to plan for their future in terms of money. And I think it's that much more evident the importance of this mission, especially now in Hawaii with rising costs of living and just the rise in homelessness and everything like that. Kids are more aware of these issues and being able to equip them in a proper setting and at least giving them a little more tools to succeed is so important and that's what Junior Achievement of Hawaii hopes to achieve. So Junior Achievement is a national organization, a national nonprofit, correct? Tell me about their mission. Yeah, so they were founded in 1919 and they have a vast network globally. I believe they service over 100 countries and we've been able to reach like 6 million students in that. So the extension, the reach and the scope of this organization is huge and they're doing amazing things worldwide to just educate kids about financial management. And how does that translate to Hawaii? I think just bringing it here to Hawaii, it was founded in 1957 and I know a lot of people who are like my parents age who remember Junior Achievement when they were in high school and so it has a very long standing here in Hawaii from teaching kids about financial management but also through some of the other programs which we'll get into later I'm sure about entrepreneurship and owning local businesses and things like that. I've had the honor of volunteering in a classroom to teach one of the Junior Achievement modules and coming from the education industry that curriculum is so amazing and they've really employed all of the different ways that kids learn so it really caters to all the senses and different ways of learning. Tell us about the classroom program. The classroom program is as you said the curriculum is amazing. It's so easy to follow as a volunteer just going into the classroom for the first time and it's so friendly so we have different curriculum designs for elementary, middle school and high school students. Everything from learning to become a part of your community, how to contribute as a citizen all the way up to financial like finance and what is credit, what is retirement and things like that more on the high school level and the kids that the volunteers get have everything from the reading material to the flyers to pass out to even like dice and things if there's an activity involved in the curriculum everything is together so it's a perfect way of like making it more accessible to the students and making it fun. There's activities, there are games, it's a good time. What I found that was really great about the program is that you can take a subject matter expert so someone who is a business owner or a business executive and they can pick up this curriculum and they can teach it because it's all prepared for them with all of the visuals, the worksheets, the posters and it makes it that easy to deliver the lesson and then they can impart their personal experience into that. Do you see that a lot? Yes, definitely. And it's like how do you teach students about credit? How do you teach them to save for retirement? These are foreign ideas. They were at least for me even graduating out of college I didn't really understand a lot of that stuff so making it accessible and putting it into a language that students can understand. I think it's a great way of connecting these high level volunteers from banks and other places and bringing them back down to hey, when you were a kid how would you understand this stuff? So as the interim president of Junior Achievement of Hawaii, is Junior Achievement just on Oahu? No, we actually have offices on the Big Island as well as Kauai. So how far is your reach? How many students do you affect? In 2017 we reached about 8,000 students. We had volunteers in around 340 classrooms and around 51 schools within the state of Hawaii. So how do you get into schools? Are there certain types of schools that are eligible? We go based on requests put in by teachers but a lot of times we have been servicing schools all over the island especially here in Oahu from Title I to Title VII all over. It's really based, right now it's based on teacher requests as of right now. And so how do they reach out and to have Junior Achievement come into their classroom? They can contact us by email or we have a website with an online form that they can request through. And tell me a little bit about how Junior Achievement partners with teachers. I mean our teachers have the hardest job managing classrooms with a few resources. How does JA partner with the teachers and how do we enhance what they're trying to deliver in their classrooms? Right, so for all of our curriculum they have a breakdown of the different requirements by the Department of Education that our curriculum fulfills and it's a good way that the teacher will be usually is in the classroom while the volunteers are teaching but it's a good way to kind of give the teachers a little breather, have the students working primarily more with the volunteers and as we covered before the kids have everything so the teachers don't have to worry about finding additional resources to implement these courses. And so is there a cost to bringing these programs into the classroom? There is no cost to the teachers. JA Hawaii takes care of all of the coordination of those costs so teachers don't have to worry about any of that. That's fantastic. And is there a maximum class size? I don't believe so, no we service them all. So which schools are you in? We're in a lot of middle schools and high schools where all over the place honestly Waianae High School, Roosevelt, but yeah McKinley, Farrington High School we've been partnering with them a lot for our entrepreneurship program which we'll talk more about later and Paola Elementary School just all over really. And so you mentioned that there are programs from elementary, middle and high school. What types of things do you teach to our elementary school children about financial readiness? It's for elementary school it's a little more basic, you know just making the ideas of money and saving more accessible to them in terms of understanding. So we do a lot of games and they're still learning these concepts of money in general but what does it mean to save and what ways am I a part of my community? These kids they see a lot they're constantly learning so teaching them about different occupations and what does that mean for your future but more at an elementary school level more at an accessible level. I think what's neat about junior achievement is that while we're looking to bring financial education to our children it also translates to career readiness and that's a topic that we've covered in past shows about the brain drain that happens in Hawaii where kids go away to college and they never come back and getting kids motivated to contribute have successful careers here or be an entrepreneur really serves our state's mission to keep our kids local, keep them home and have them contributing to our community. What do you feel about that? I mean how does junior achievement of Hawaii align to what our goals are as a state? Our J-Hawaii definitely we're in line with especially Governor Ige's push for 2025 in that we want to get these kids you know through college get an education but keep them here in Hawaii and whether it be small business owners or other startups or even just maintaining that talent here in Hawaii in that way we're aligning with Governor Ige's plan which is really good I think keeping that local talent people who have grown up here who have seen firsthand just the changes that are going on in our economy and keeping that sense of aloha you know and keeping that cycling through I think is so important and J-Hawaii is helping achieve that I think. We're going to go to a short break but when we come back let's talk about some of the people that are involved in junior achievement in Hawaii and how the local community and businesses have been supporting junior achievement we're going to take that short break this is business in Hawaii and we'll see you back here shortly. 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We are on at Thursdays at 4 p.m. and we hope we'll see you next time. Welcome back. This is business in Hawaii and today we have Tiffany Yoshida interim president of junior achievement of Hawaii with us. So before we went to break we're talking about the classrooms and the volunteers that make the classroom program happen. Talk to me about the volunteers. Who are they? Where do they come from? Yeah, we have around 300 volunteers here at JA Hawaii who have been contributing over 48,000 volunteer hours last year alone and they're from all walks of life from big banks, local banks here in Hawaii to just home school parents and University of Hawaii. We have volunteers from all over the state. And so I do know that some of the major banks, in fact all of the major banks in Hawaii are heavily involved with junior achievement of Hawaii, particularly on the volunteer side. Their employees get into the classrooms and they meet with our kids on all levels. Can you tell me about how junior achievement of Hawaii has partnered with these folks in the community to bring those programs? Yes, definitely. So we have volunteers from a lot of our local banks. So Bank of Hawaii, American Savings Bank, First Hawaiian Bank and even Central Pacific Bank. And we have volunteers from branch managers to even vice presidents for these banks going into the schools and delivering this curriculum. I've seen a couple videos of them, especially the VPs, like doing presentations for elementary school kids, which is awesome. I think we might have a couple of pictures of those classrooms where we had some of our volunteers interacting with our kids, we'll see if we can find that. But tell me about how they get involved. So a lot of them will contact our coordinator. You can also, if you're interested in volunteering, you can go to our website. We have a volunteer format you can fill out and we would contact you through that as well. So I know that there are some other interesting programs that junior achievement does. One of which is called Monotank, is that correct? Very similar to the television program, Shark Tank, right? Tell us about that. Yeah, so we have an entrepreneurship program specific to our high school students. We've been working consistently with a teacher at Farrington High School and his group of students and you can see the progression from a concept to a business plan all the way to presentation of their idea and their company. We have the Monotank event where students will pitch their idea to a bunch of local entrepreneurs here in the islands and it's a great first experience I think for students who are interested in possibly owning their own business someday or going into that startup entrepreneurship environment. So when does this happen? Right now we're kind of reorganizing the whole program but we try to deliver it in the fall as well as in the spring. And so is there a coach or a mentor that gets these teams together? Yes, yes, yes, we'll have mentors from our pool of volunteers, some of our local banks also provide that mentorship and support as well and we have our staff who will also contribute to that as well. I know that in learning about the past Monotanks that there's a mentor assigned to each team and so there may be a team or two from multiple high schools. There's a mentor who is usually a business person in our community that goes and coaches the team on their business plan, their marketing plan, the financial budgeting aspect of their business and from what I understand they actually go ahead and either produce the good or put out the service for public consumption. Is that correct? That is correct. It's a real money, seed money that is being dispersed to these student companies and they will actually purchase the raw goods to produce these things and same thing, same as a real business just keeping track of their expenses and as well as their revenues and getting that first hand experience, it's a really great program. What are some of the examples of the things that the students have done in those think tank type businesses? I know one of the highlight ones were earphones and they had marketed it towards their school putting in the logo of their school and I heard that was a really big item, a hot item that students really wanted. I know that the junior achievement of Hawaii programs on the neighbor islands also run a separate event, a mono tank, I don't know if they call it a mono tank in Hilo and then in Kauai but I've seen some products being sold from the Hilo company program that were quite impressive and they sell them right around Christmas. I do know that they went into the shopping malls, the local shopping malls during the holiday season which really got the students motivated and from what I understand some of them make some real substantial money which of course is the motivator for them to get interested into entrepreneurship. What are your success stories? Have you had a chance to speak with some of the graduates of junior achievement? I haven't personally had a chance to speak with them but everyone I've talked to in the community who have participated in this program have only great things to say, like good fond memories about their time. We have a couple of pictures from some of your activities, you want to tell us about them? Let's see. Yeah, so these are some of our volunteers, they're in the elementary school classrooms and as you can see it's a fun environment to learn about money management and it's taking away that scary kind of feeling towards money or whatever it may be and making it really accessible and engaging for the students. And it looks like it's very interactive and yeah, so they'll have a lot of games and again all of these materials are included in the kit that volunteers receive so there's nothing extra that a teacher would need to purchase as well as for the volunteer, it's all provided and the instructions are very user friendly. How long is a class session? They're usually around 45 minutes. Oh so yes, so here's some of our volunteers, the kids, it's just a great way to connect these people who are involved, who are business owners, who are VPs at banks or whatever it may be and connecting them back with the community in a way where they feel comfortable. It's talking about what they do for a living for the most part. So are the programs just a one-time 45 minute lesson or are there multiple modules? Depending on the school and the curriculum we'll have one-time visits for just 45 minutes to an hour and other times for more of the high school, more complicated curriculum it's maybe two or three visits. Nice. But it's a great way to build that rapport and build that relationship with the students I think. So the curriculum is designed to be 45 minute sessions, multiple sessions and is that the format for every grade level? For the more for the complicated stuff, for more of the elementary school curriculum it's a little more one-stop shop. And then when you get these programs into the high schools, do they actually take over classroom time? Yes, yes. We are in the classroom. The coordinator for our volunteers is really good and will lay it out exactly what period or what time, the days and everything. So it's really easy to get into volunteer experience. Very nice. So I know that Junior Achievement of Hawaii is looking to build their volunteer base, their sponsorship base. Tell us what you're looking for. We're always looking for organizations to partner with us, whether it be volunteers or resources as well. It's a growing concept and we're always looking for people who share that same heart and that same mission and vision with us and we just hope to continue to extend our reach in Hawaii. So for those folks who are interested in volunteering, tell me about the time commitment that you need from them. What does that look like? Right. Honestly, if you can even just give us a day, we're always open to new volunteers. Once you try it, I assure you the product sells itself. It is a great experience and you will have a good experience in my opinion. So I do know that volunteers will get the curriculum. Is it a couple weeks before they go into the classroom? Correct. You don't have to go in for training or anything. The kids are that good at explaining exactly what is expected and down to each detail, what to say, how to explain the activities and things like that. The kids are actually mailed directly to your place and so you don't have to go in for any long trainings or anything like that. Nice. So they'll get their kids, they can kind of get familiar with it and then they go into the classroom 45 minutes and that's fantastic. And you've just impacted a whole classroom of students. That's fantastic. I also know that junior achievement employees looking for some really great community sponsors for these classrooms. Tell us about that. We're looking for sponsorship for classrooms. I think that right now we are receiving sponsorships for a couple select schools here in the islands but we're always looking for more and your sponsorship will help us to get those kids into the hands of our volunteers and out to the students. Fantastic. We are just about out of time but will you tell our viewers how they can get more information about junior achievement or get involved if that's their interest level? Yeah, so if you're interested in working with us, you can go to our website at jahoawe.org. We have forms for you to fill out online if you're a teacher and want to bring our volunteers into your classroom and we also have a volunteer form. So if you're interested in volunteering with us then you can fill that out as well and our coordinator will contact you. You can also learn more about the overall junior achievement program or organization at www.juniorachievement.org. And of course if our company sponsors out there are interested in getting involved they can contact you as well. Yes. Fantastic. Thank you Tiffany for joining us today. Junior achievement is one of those things that we really can get passionate about because it's affecting our children and eventually they're give back to the community and I think it's just such a passionate cause. So I appreciate you being here. I wanted to thank the amazing production staff here in the studio. If you would like to be a guest on our show please email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 o'clock and we look forward to seeing you here next week.