Junior Achievement of San Diego and Imperial Counties

Fantastic experience here with my daughter and her whole 5^th grade class!
All the parents who volunteered met at 7:30am. Training didn’t start until 8:00 and I’m sure they do this to help with the punctually challenged parents.
We went through almost an hour of training to help us understand the flow of the day and to get familiar with the layout of both Biztown and the schedule.
This program instills in children at a young age the importance of education, applying for jobs, the hiring process, interview procedures, balancing a checkbook, job description including duties of a CEO/​CFO, loan applications, bank deposits, I could go on and on.
The whole town is pretty impressive complete with banks, The Super Dentists, Kaiser, airport, UT, NBC news (where I got to work:)), radio station, Jack-​in-​the-​Box, UPS, Humane Society, City Hall, EDCO, Cox Communications, SDG&E, Seaworld, etc. The businesses are miniature replicas and are actually created and sponsored by the businesses themselves. The Students all get to run each business based off the hiring process done through the school in advance.
It was so fun to see the kids work together and troubleshoot each problem as is presented itself. I think they all had a new appreciation for us parents. :)
I was mentally exhausted by the time we we were done and thanking God for teachers and wondering how they do what they do every day!

This made for a fun field trip but was confusing for everybody. We remained in a state of confusion for most of the day.
I volunteered to help out at our school’s turn here. We (parent volunteers) had strict instructions to arrive in their lobby by 8 am sharp. This forced us to find overnight lodging and rides to school for all of our children (including for our fifth grader who was attending this class trip).
Once I finally found the place we were all led upstairs to a classroom for instructions. Then we endured the excruciating process of being led line by line as «Louis» simply read the information aloud to us (as we followed along while he read).
This would have been more expeditiously handled by foregoing the hour long meeting and having simply been provided with a succinct parental instruction manual prior to our event. They also had us fill out a contact sheet with questions about our volunteering again for other school visits. Had I known then just how tedious and how very confusing our day would be, I would never have agreed to return for a second visit.
Then bammo! Our instructional meeting was over as our children filed into the place. Now the awful confusion commenced — only receding many hours later at the close of our day.
The KidTown, itself, is adorable. It reminds me of a tiny Disneyland Main Street. Our room was okay… although not in the best condition.
The kids had fun. That’s the important thing.

Oh where do I start. My first time going to volunteer at JA. And I had seen pictures of Biztown but wow! Amazing. I truly love what they are doing there for our kids. My 5^th grader told me after I picked her up from school (the same day of her field trip to JA) -«mom, work is so stressful. How do you do it?» I highly recommend parents to go and volunteer with their kids. I did and had a blast!

Great experience. Well organized. However, I noticed that 75% of the campers were female but 80% of the CEOs were male. Just like the real world! Great lesson for the girls!

This was one of the best field trips my 5^th grade son has been on. No, it’s not an amusement park, and no, it’s not a stuffy, boring, learning experience. It’s part fun, part learning, and in the end, everyone benefits from the trip.
The JA Biztown program starts long before the actual fieldtrip with in school curriculum and prep. The kids learn all about real life jobs and experiences. They learn how to balance checkbooks. They learn how to apply for loans. They even have real interviews for jobs. It’s amazing.
Weeks of preparation culminated in the trip to JA Biztown. It’s literally a mini city with actual replicas of local businesses. I volunteered and was assigned Mission Federal Credit Union. The kids had real desks and processed checks and deposits just like the actual bank. Other businesses were the UPS Store, Jack in the Box, Sea World, and the Union Tribune, just to name a few.
The staff were great and were always available. I will say that I wished the training for the parent volunteers was a bit more useful. We pretty much had to learn on the job, as our training was cut a bit short because of a late start. The staff were awesome nonetheless.
My son had such a great experience that he is interested in a summer camp here. I’ll let him figure out later that working isn’t really as fun as pretend work.

I volunteered here for my sons field trip. It was an awesome experience for both the kids and volunteers!
We started the day with a brief training from the safe explaining what the program was and how we would help the kids or just encourage them rather. An hour and a half later we were assigned our businesses and dismissed to wait for the kids to arrive.
The smiles from the kids that see the little town they are going to run is priceless! The town has companies like 933, SDG&E, Sun Diego, Sea World, Union Tribune, Kaiser, Mission Federal, US bank and a few others that escape my mind. All these companies are sponsored by the actual companies.
The kids ran the whole city and it was quite impressive! They wrote checks, signed leases, read meters, made commercials, installed phones, sold food. They loved it and we all loved to watch it!
I would definitely volunteer again! Thanks for enriching our children with such an amazing program JA biz town!