A collaborative youth service learning project developed by Junior Achievement (JA) of Greater Birmingham and implemented by Ashville High School students will receive a $10,000 grant from the State Farm Southern Zone Youth Advisory Board (SFSZYAB). This is the tenth year for the Ashville High School program, but the first year to be included in this special grant.

The SFSZYAB consists of seven students, ages seventeen to twenty-two from Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia. Their primary function is to oversee $75,000 in State Farm-funded youth-directed service learning grants addressing issues such as auto safety, financial education, access to higher education and environmental responsibility. Out of all applicants across the southeast, the JA program was one of only a few to receive the maximum amount of $10,000.

Nearly 100 students from Staci Butts’ classes at Ashville High School will study, plan and present Junior Achievement programs to students at Ashville Elementary School. About 40 are teaching first and fourth grade this fall, the rest will teach kindergarten, second and third grades in the spring.

“My students learning the significance of volunteer service along with the importance of being positive role models is as crucial to their education as the curriculum I teach,” says Staci Butts, 12th grade Government/Economics teacher at Ashville High School. “The JA program is a tool in which those two lessons can be taught.”

The grant will also support the same service learning programs at Ramsay High School, whose partner is Glen Iris and EPIC Elementary Schools, Woodlawn High School, who partners with Robinson Elementary School in Birmingham, as well as Fairfield High School partnered with C.J. Reynolds Elementary in Fairfield.

“By empowering older students to reach out to younger ones, not only will they develop important performance and management skills, but will also cultivate a lasting relationship with their communities and deepen their understanding of how these relationships can bring about positive change.,” says Gabe Hyde of the SFSZYAB. “The younger students will have new role models and all will learn important financial and workforce readiness skills.”