The Brown Wrestling Team is excited to partner with the Rhode Island chapter of Junior Achievement. Junior Achievement of Rhode Island provides the training, the materials, and the support. The Brown Wrestling Team provides its time, its energy, and its core values of loyalty, respect, disciple, self-reliance, good sportsmanship, friendship and sacrifice.
Junior Achievement is the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs. Its programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace. Students put these lessons into action and learn the value of contributing to their communities.
To highlight this partnership, Junior Achievement and the Brown Wrestling Team hosted a JA in a Day event on January 23, 2012. The Brown Wrestling Team and alumni traveled to the Citizen’s Memorial Elementary School in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and took over the school for a day and engage the students in a variety of exercises and programs. JA in a Day is a unique initiative that allows volunteers to teach all of the lessons of Junior Achievement's elementary school programs in an intensive and effective one-day effort.
All twenty-six men volunteered in pairs or groups of three in twelve classrooms of twenty-five to thrity students. During the course of JA in a Day, the Brown Wrestling Team instructed students about various aspects of financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship. For instance, students in the second grade learned about "Our Community" and had a chance to see how money moves through a community, creating jobs and generating tax proceeds that pay for schools, parks and streets. In fifth grade, students studied "Our Nation," where they began to learn about economic concepts such as opportunity cost and supply and demand.
Throughout the day, the principal (a Brown alumnus), teachers, and even students gushed over the amazing job the Brown Wrestling Team was doing in their classrooms. Junior Achievement has run this program at the school for years, but all Chris Ayers ’03 heard was how these men were the best crop of volunteers that have come through the school’s doors. The school and students want the Brown Wrestling Team back!
Brown’s head coach Dave Amato said it best – "It is always important that Brown student-athletes give back to community. Any time you can influence children is definitely a big plus. Junior Achievement is an organization that helps today's youth and we are very proud that at Brown our student-athletes can be a part of it."
After the wrestling season concludes, the Brown Wrestling Team plans to take part in the five to seven week Junior Achievement program where each wrestler will commit to volunteering one-hour a week. Junior Achievement will also highlight its unique partnership with the Brown Wrestling Team at its annual fundraiser in Spring 2012. And of course, the men will return to the Citizen’s Memorial Elementary School next January.
This is the start of a great new tradition!
View photos of the JA in a Day event and learn more about Brown Wrestling at www.brownbears.prestosports.com/sports/m-wrestl/index. And learn more about Junior Achievement at www.ja.org.
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