Junior Achievement turns Boston tykes into tycoons

Christine McCall

As part of the Junior Achievement program to help high school students learn the tricks of the business trade, Arielle Spivey, Victor Batiz and Chris Morris-King started their own theoretical company.

They called it Merge Inc., and it was a merger of sorts of all of the products they wanted to sell — coffee mugs, coffee and, of course, candy.

As they tell the story, each of them learned about importing coffee beans, the cost of labor and production and the value of marketing.

It might sound boring to some, but they said it was a great experience.

“It gave me confidence that I could start my own company and succeed,” said Batiz, 17. “I can do anything and undertake anything.”

And that is the point of the Junior Achievement Program.

Founded in 1919, JA has reached approximately 60 million students by providing them with an opportunity to learn about economics and the free enterprise system. JA of Eastern Massachusetts alone touched 36,000 youth this past year in 200 different schools.

“Our ultimate goal is to expose students to business literacy,” said Boston Education Manager Julie Cabral.

Batiz clearly liked the program. He will be a senior at Boston Latin this September and said he hopes to attend Bentley, Babson or Boston University and major in Business Administration with a minor in architectural design.

Batiz said says that he really enjoyed getting to know his fellow peers. One of them was Morris-King. He too was excited about the program.

He said JA gave him the chance to meet incredibly smart and talented people from all over Massachusetts. He has made connections and formed relationships with many of his peers and admits that the feeling of working together was great.

“JA is a great way to get everyone to feel that you can do it,” Morris-King said, adding that they also learned “our futures are not that far off.”

He has been involved in the program since last September.

“It lets you know that you can do things on a large scale,” he said. “It allows you to believe in yourself and gives you knowledge to succeed.”

Morris-King said he would like to pursue a political science and law degree. He hopes to attend either Northeastern or Howard University and, one day, start his own law firm.

Students involved in JA come from diverse backgrounds and would not otherwise receive the chance to learn about the business world.

There are a variety of programs open to students in the JA program. For elementary school-aged children, the programs teach basic concepts of business and economics. Middle school programs build on the basics and offer students a chance to “shadow” a business executive for a day.

These JA programs also add substance to the material children are learning in school in their social studies programs and help students develop communication skills that are key to working in any business.

As for the high school programs, they are centered on the idea of student-led enterprise. The programs help students learn about decision-making.

Spivey, 17, of Hyde Park, was also a member of the Marian L. Heard Scholars Program and will be a senior in the fall at Concord-Carlisle High School. She has been involved in this JA program since the spring of 2005.

Her favorite part was working with her colleagues and starting Merge Inc.

Looking down the road, Spivey is not exactly sure what she wants to do. One thing is clear: she wants to be a leader.

“The JA program helped me,” she said, “because if I want to run my own business one day, I have the knowledge of how to start it on my own.”