Dear JA Supporters:
With the pervasive news coverage of America's financial turmoil, our children may have questions about what is going on in our economy. Many adults have a difficult time understanding-much less explaining in an age-appropriate way to a child-what is going on in our government and in our financial markets.
America can, and must, do a better job of educating our kids about effective money management, not only so they can avoid the financial pitfalls into which so many adults have fallen, but because our kids will someday run our businesses, our government, and our financial institutions.
How can young people get the financial knowledge that they so desperately need? Fortunately, Junior Achievement is answering the call to educate the next generation of consumers about how to effectively manage their money.
In addition to our usual classroom curriculum, JA is providing resources to help explain just how we ended up in the current situation. We are taking a lead in educating young people about the crisis by providing them with timely information that will help them understand the present crisis and, more importantly, how a similar crisis may be averted in the future.
Two versions of a study titled Understanding the Financial Crisis: Origin and Impact have been commissioned by JA Worldwide to provide students and volunteers/educators with a better perspective of the evolution of the present crisis, its impact on the economy, and lessons learned.
You can find both of these papers on our web site.
Plans are underway to provide additional papers focusing on financial literacy topics. In the meantime, we hope these papers will provide you with additional tools you can use to reach young people with relevant financial literacy information.
Please feel free to provide us with your feedback regarding these papers, and to share any other ideas you have about resources we can provide to assist you in teaching our youth the importance of financial literacy. | 
