Today, Junior Achievement of San Diego is celebrating 100 years of providing leadership training, financial literacy education, and career exposure opportunities to young people.

We join with many throughout the community in congratulating Junior Achievement on this important milestone.

Since 2008, SDG&E has partnered with Junior Achievement to support JA BizTown – a 10,000 square-foot mini-city located in Mission Valley, where kids take on roles running the shops and businesses located inside the town and discover how the "real world" works.

Inside BizTown, there is a miniature store representing SDG&E, where students learn about the energy business, such as collecting utility payments, how to save energy, what electric vehicles are, and how they are charged. The SDG&E shop workers don SDG&E-branded hard hats and construction vests.

As part of the BizTown experience, students also take the Energy Ambassador Pledge: “I pledge to do my part to save energy and water at home. I will share the new tips I learned today with my family. Count on me to help create a sustainable future for all of us!”

What BizTown teaches students

Each day, about 150 5th graders become JA BizTown "citizens," where they work in one of 21 businesses. Each citizen has a job for the day, participates in business and town meetings, gets paid twice, manages a checking account, purchases retail items to take home, gets a health check-up, and much more!

The BizTown field trip is the culmination of several weeks of classroom learning. Prior to visiting BizTown, students create resumes, complete job applications, interview for jobs, and put together business plans for their assigned businesses. When students arrive at JA BizTown, they take on roles as entrepreneurs, employees (including SDG&E employees) and consumers.

Each year, more than 19,000 students, 24,000 parents, 2400 business volunteers, 1200 teachers and hundreds of business leaders, educators and community groups visit BizTown.

Learn more

For more information about Junior Achievement of San Diego and BizTown, visit https://www.jasandiego.org/programs/ja-biztown.html. Consider volunteering to support the simulation experiences for students who come to visit BizTown.