Partnering with JA

Your organisation can make a real and meaningful difference to the lives of young people in your community.

JA works in partnership with our supporting organisations to complement the work of our schools by recruiting, training and managing business volunteers to work with students to inspire and motivate them to make the most of their education.

We pride ourselves on our ability to create mutually beneficial partnerships with a range of organisations. From providing inspiring hands-on volunteering opportunities to developing world class skills development programmes, we have significant experience in creating long-term bespoke partnerships that are helping young people to develop the skills and attitudes to succeed.

Your support is a visible, meaningful, and measurable demonstration of your organisation's commitment to the future success of our young people. Each partner makes a fundamental difference in our ability to impact more students in more ways, and meet the growing demand for our programmes.

Our impact

Since 1996 JA has worked with business leaders and school leaders all over Ireland. In that time, more than 30,000 business volunteers have enabled more than 900,000 students to benefit from JA programmes and workshops.

Your organisation can make a real and meaningful difference to the lives of young people in your community. JA programmes:

Help boost career ambitions
Develop transversal skills
Emphasise link between education and the working world
Lead to higher employability
Lead to improved entrepreneurial skills and attitudes
Enhance intentions to start a business

What’s involved?

An annual financial contribution
As much or as little of your staff’s time as you can give to your local school & their students…

Benefit to your organisation

Benefit to your organisation include:

Excellent form of personal development for staff
Enhanced presentation and communication skills for business volunteers
Increased employee engagement and staff retention
Establish a profile of corporate responsibility in the local community
Helping develop work readiness among young people
Providing role models & encouraging "at risk" young people to stay in education
Help meet your Corporate Social Responsibility objectives

A partnership with JA includes:

Develop bespoke proposals to meet your Corporate Social Responsibility goals

Full suite of project management services

School relationship management

Recruitment, vetting and training of volunteers

Recognize and promote our partnership through communication initiatives

Impact evaluation and report presentation

Benefits to your staff

Surveys of more than 3,000 volunteers over the past five years reported the following:

97% said students responded well to the opportunity to work with a business volunteer
97% said JA provided sufficient support during the course of their programme
97% would participate again in the future
99% would recommend volunteering with JA to colleagues

Volunteers also noted the following benefits after their JA experience:

76% found their participation enhanced their communication skills
60% reported a boost in confidence
45% reported improved organisational skills
39% felt enhanced pride in their company as well as job satisfaction
38% reported increased job satisfaction

Our Supporters

JA & THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Young people face a global employment crisis that will impact their career opportunities and financial well-being for the rest of their lives. This crisis is due in part to the changing nature of work itself, which is widening the gap between the needs of employers and the skills of young people. So critical are the challenges facing today’s youth that more than one-third of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) directly reference young people.

Target 4.4: Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have technical and vocational skills for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.

We are convinced that Quality Education is the key to unlock the potential of our young people. This is why we are committed to working with partners in industry and education to ensure that all our students receive early-stage entrepreneurship education developing their ability to think positively, to identify opportunities to make things happen, to have the self-confidence to achieve their goals, and to use their talents to build a better society.

Target 8.6: Substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training

The creation of quality jobs will remain a major challenge for all economies going forward. 470 million jobs are needed globally for new entrants to the labour market between 2016 and 2030, of which a large quantity is directly tied to youth unemployment, and this is why we are committed to understand and enlarge the impact of entrepreneurial education. Early-stage entrepreneurship education encourages students to develop transversal skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem solving which help equip young people with essential skills to prepare them for the future work place and to achieve success in their lives after they finish school.

Target 17.17: Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships

Multi-stakeholder partnerships will be crucial to leverage the inter-linkages between the SGDs and enhance their effectiveness and impact and accelerate progress. Our extensive relationships in industry and education makes us positioned to be a leader among non-profits in contributing to the sustainable development goals. Together we make sure that JAI are able to provide our students with the necessarily skills they need to contribute to sustainable development.

We are excited to further investigate and develop our work in line with the sustainable development goals with our member organisations and partners and will make sure to contribute to the fullest of our capabilities.

If you would like to learn more or partner with JA please contact us below:

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