Year-End Report Card

It’s that time of year again. The time where we reflect on opportunities for growth as well as areas where we excelled.

We’ve got some good news: JA Southern Alberta is finishing off the 2021/22 school year with an A+ average.

We know that our donors, students, education and community partners are all going to be very proud of us.

In 2021/22, we focused our programming on financial literacy, work readiness, entrepreneurship training, and digital literacy.

Here’s a summary of what we accomplished this school year:

???? ?? 40,000+ students

???? ?? 1,534 classrooms

?? 27 school boards

?? 124 communities

Though we finished the year closer to “normal” than we have been in over two years, our organization like so many others was forced to weather storms associated with COVID-19 waves. We dealt with office and school closures, uncertainty surrounding in-person events like our annual Business Hall of Fame, and uncertainty amongst educators about what the new curriculum might mean for them.

Throughout this, we stuck together and persevered. We kept our focus on how we could deliver as much good as possible by remembering what is most important in the work we do: the well-being of the youth we serve.

Behind all of the numbers we use to quantify our accomplishments, there are qualitative benefits, like strengthening self-efficacy, that play a huge role in setting young people up for success in school and life.

Students with strong self-efficacy believe they will succeed, and this is an important indicator of actually achieving success. Research tells us that self-efficacy can be taught in two primary ways: mastering skills through hands-on and experimental learning (JA programming) and through observing the success of others who have high levels of self-efficacy (JA volunteers in the classroom).

The bottom line is that stronger students make for a stronger workforce, which ultimately makes for a resilient and productive economy.

More than the impact we’ve had directly on students, we’ve deepened our relationships with other important stakeholders that can help us deliver good and worked hard to come up with creative ways to work with those partners, including government, business, and community organizations.

We participated in the @Business Council of Alberta’s Define the Decade project. If you’re interested, you can read our contributions here.

We secured funding support for financial literacy, digital literacy, and women in STEM projects that will contribute to greater gender equality in the tech and startup space.

We announced inductees for the 2022 Business Hall of Fame, which we are proud to say is an incredibly accomplished and diverse group of community builders. More on that here.

We sought partnerships within the startup and technology community and look forward to partnering with organizations that have a vested interest in cultivating a skilled workforce so Alberta can continue on its trajectory as a tech hub.

We did so much, but we’re not even close to scratching the surface of our potential. Next year, we’re on track for a significant expansion:

???? ?? 50,000+ students

???? ?? 2,226 classrooms

?? 27 school boards

?? 130+ communities

Throughout this summer and into the next school year, we will be supporting educators to deliver elements of the new Physical Education and Wellness curriculum, including K-6 financial literacy learner outcomes.

We’re also in the process of our own vision planning engaging stakeholders to solicit feedback on where we can improve, what our strategic advantages are, and ideas to help us dream big for the next three, five, and ten years so we can be active participants in the NEW Alberta Advantage (more about that in an article I wrote recently here).

If you’re interested in providing feedback on this, please reach out to me directly.