With summer extracurricular activities at the forefront of many families’ dinner conversations this season, and many listeners following up with us about valuable post-June endeavors for their middle school students, we bring you our second episode on the not-so-ordinary summer camp experience. Listen in as hosts Evan and Todd talk with Junior Achievement (JA) of Oregon and SW Washington’s VP of Programs, Barbara Smith, about their unique, experiential program for kids, JA BizTown Summer Camp!
Barbara Smith joined the JA team in 2006 to help them in their pursuit of educating Kindergarten-12th grade students around the importance of financial literacy, entrepreneurship and work readiness. Throughout her tenure, she has overseen both in-class and JA BizTown programming, which under her direction, has grown to serve nearly 40,000 local students annually. In April of 2013, Smith helped to spearhead the launch of the organization’s newest program, JA Finance Park, a mobile personal financial literacy program for middle and high school students. She currently lives in Vancouver, WA with her husband Brian, three children and her dog, Copper.