Two Valley Nonprofits Named Bank of America Neighborhood Builder Award Recipients
Two Arizona nonprofits — Junior Achievement of Arizona and Year Up Arizona — have been named the 2018 Bank of America Neighborhood Builder award recipients for their work in providing financial education and job readiness training for underserved children and young adults.
Each nonprofit will receive $200,000 in unrestricted grant funding through to program to expand their programs.
“Junior Achievement of Arizona and Year Up Arizona are empowering students and young adults to be contributing members of our economy and community by giving them tools to help them see and begin to reach their full potential,” said Bank of America market president for Arizona Benito Almanza. “We share the mission of these two nonprofits to make lives better, and the Neighborhood Builder program provides critical capital and leadership development resources so that they can succeed while helping even more of their participants succeed.”
Both programs aim to empower youth to develop the behaviors and skills necessary to pursue long-term, sustainable jobs and a stronger financial future. While Arizona is expected to continue its rapid job growth, the state also has one of the highest rates of disconnected youth who are homeless, in foster care, unemployed or involved with the justice system.
Junior Achievement of Arizona will use the funding to support the development of their first digital curriculum for 12 to 18-year-old students.
“We’re thrilled to have Bank of America alongside us as we develop our first digital curriculum, and are especially excited to accelerate the development of our new educational video game. This digital curriculum will not only allow us to provide interactive learning tools to underserved students, but will also allow us to reach populations that do not currently have access to JuniorAchievement of Arizona curriculum,” said Katherine Cecala, president of Junior Achievement of Arizona. “Bank of America employees have been volunteer teaching financial education alongside Junior Achievement of Arizona for 20 years, and we’re delighted that this partnership and program continues to evolve with how youth consumes and processes new information.”
Year Up Arizona will use its funding to scale its young adult job training programs.
“The Neighborhood Builders Award will allow us to increase awareness of Year Up Arizona’s proven approach to job training throughout the community and will help us grow to connect even more young adults in need of an opportunity with companies in need of their talent,” said Year Up Arizona executive director Kim Owens.
