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NILES — In response to recent school closures, Junior Achievement is now providing free online resources to students, teachers and parents. With a wide variety of printables, online games, and apps area youth can spend more time planning for and dreaming about tomorrow — and less time worrying about today.

With schools currently closed, Junior Achievement has been making swift adjustments to support students, parents and teachers. JA, a nonprofit whose mission is to prepare young people to succeed in the global economy, traditionally delivers lessons to students in classrooms through its network of community volunteers. However, even now, with classrooms empty, JA wants to ensure that the learning does not end. 

JA USA announced the launch of the new online resource “Project Tomorrows.” Through Project Tomorrows, JA is providing access to a wide variety of free, online learning activities — including printables, online games, videos and apps — that students can explore on their own, with a parent or other adult, or with teachers via a virtual learning environment. Resources are organized by grade level and are focused on JA’s three pillars: work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. Available activities range from “Cha-Ching” music videos — which use songs to help young children explore the four key concepts of money: earn, save, spend and donate — to the “Assembling Your Career” app — which lets middle and high school students virtually job-shadow various STEM professionals. Dozens of JA learning experiences are already available at the Project Tomorrows site and new material will continue to be added throughout the coming weeks.

To complement these resources, JA of Northern Indiana will be creating and uploading dozens of videos in which JA staff expertly present abbreviated versions of in-class JA lessons. At each grade level, five to seven sequential video lessons will be available for educators and parents to share with students. Videos are expected to be available by Friday, March 27.

JA of Northern Indiana has also made learning from home easier by launching a web-based career exploration guide that is designed to expose students in our region to hundreds of local career pathways. This career exploration guide highlights local wages, work expectations, employment opportunities, and education and training requirements and costs by career. This locally created tool is a unique resource, as there is no other website or compendium that provides area students with such a vast amount of localized career, training, and education information, according to JA representatives.

Both Project Tomorrows and the digital career exploration guide can be accessed through JA of Northern Indiana’s website, jani.org. These JA resources are free to everyone — even if a child or school has never engaged with JA in the past. Local educators who have questions or would like more information about how to incorporate JA learning into their digital or virtual curricula can contact the education department at JA of Northern Indiana.

JA of Northern Indiana has been serving local youth since 1952. Last year, across its 30-county service area, the local organization delivered JA programming to more than 142,000 pre-kindergarten through high school students.