As artificial intelligence and virtual learning tools increasingly dominate classroom conversations, Junior Achievement of Georgia is betting on something decidedly old-school: putting sixth graders to work.
On Wednesday, March 4, Junior Achievement of Georgia and The UPS Store celebrated the ribbon-cutting of a newly redesigned UPS Store storefront inside JA BizTown, a simulated city housed at the JA Chick-fil-A Discovery Center in downtown Atlanta.
John Hancock, president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Georgia, said the BizTown program, which serves sixth graders through a blended curriculum combining in-classroom instruction with the hands-on simulation, is designed to give students exposure to real business decisions.
“We happen to be doubling down on the importance of in-person,” Hancock said. “There’s still a place for people to spend time together.”
On an average program day, 120 sixth graders fill the simulated city, mentored by corporate volunteers and supervised by teachers. The students run 18 businesses, including the UPS Store location, which has been part of BizTown since the program launched. The remodel, completed over the Christmas holiday, reflects an update to UPS’s current branding.
Hancock said the irony of BizTown’s staying power is that its differentiator is precisely what it is not.
“A point of differentiation, ironically, is to not be online, to not be virtual,” he said. “When kids are learning things like critical thinking, strategy, and solving problems, these are all the kinds of things they have to work through during the simulation. It’s better, particularly when you’re young, to learn that stuff in person.”
Sarah Casalan, president of The UPS Store, Inc., said the partnership with Junior Achievement aligns with her company’s identity as a fundamentally human business.
“There is a lot of life that is happening in our stores,” Casalan said. “We have 1 billion trips into the stores every year. And for us to be here at JA and in BizTowns across the country, it is an extension of that humanity.”
Casalan, who joined UPS four years ago after leading retail operations for brands including Crate & Barrel and the Ralph Lauren organization, said the opportunity to modernize the UPS Store’s value proposition for a new generation was what drew her to the role.
Also present at Wednesday’s event was Kimberly Gates, a UPS Store franchisee whose location sits near the Tanger Outlets in Locust Grove, Georgia. Gates, a lifelong Atlanta native and Mays High School graduate, said she stumbled into franchise ownership during the pandemic after a 24-year career with an engineering society.
“I went in, I observed what they were doing while I was waiting in line,” Gates said of her first visit to a UPS Store while returning an Amazon package. “I was like, I can do that.”
Gates, who wore a shirt reading “Boss Lady CEO” to the event, said she sees her story as a source of inspiration, especially for the young students BizTown is designed to serve.
“I think it’s an inspiration to a lot of young people to know that I own a UPS Store,” Gates said. “It’s just something I thought I could do. So I did it.”
Since launching its Start Small, Grow Big fundraising program in fall 2022, The UPS Store has raised nearly $10 million for Junior Achievement USA through customer donations at more than 5,500 locations nationwide, including more than $375,000 specifically for Junior Achievement of Georgia, which serves more than 60,000 students annually in the metro Atlanta region.
Atlanta’s rate of new business applications is nearly double the national average, according to the event’s media advisory, and 30.1% of Georgia business owners are under 40, making programs like BizTown increasingly relevant to the city’s economic future.
Casalan said the franchise system’s strength is what makes community partnerships like the one with Junior Achievement possible.
“You can go into business for yourself, but not by yourself,” she said. “We have a shared responsibility to make sure that our franchisees are successful and that they are positively impacting their communities.”