Young Entrepreneur Discovers New Horizons
22,453 students have benefited from the JA Peru Building
Young Entrepreneurs Program since 2005.
Junior Achievement
transforms lives. In the case
of one Peruvian student, the
JA experience
changed his
life's course from working as
a laborer in a remote area
to becoming a university
student with a future career
as a successful professional in the global
marketplace.
David Gutierrez is a business administration
student at the North Private University in
Cajamarca. In many places in the world,
being a college student is not regarded as an
extraordinary circumstance. David, however,
comes from a rural community in the northern
highlands of Peru where 77 percent of the
population lives in poverty.
Job opportunities usually are limited to working on cattle ranches or in agriculture. While in secondary school, David participated in Junior Achievement. In 2010, at a JA Peru presentation for local business leaders, David gave his personal testimony, attributing all his personal achievements—and his knowledge of finance, economics and entrepreneurship— to completing JA Peru's Building Young Entrepreneurs Program (including Our City®, The Economics of Staying in School ®, Enterprise in Action®, Personal Economics® and JA Company Program® ).
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| Students in JA Peru's Building Young Entrepreneurs Program will have many career options. |
David's JA work earned him a scholarship
to the International Entrepreneurship Forum
in Cordoba, Argentina, where his eyes were
opened to many options available in the global
economy. Inspired and energized, this young
man who had never before been away from
his hometown immediately put his JA training
and business skills to work. He reorganized
his father's handmade brick production into
a profitable business. He also applied for
university so he could attain the education that
would help him achieve his goals. David's accomplishment is not quite as
unusual as it once was, thanks to JA Peru's
Building Young Entrepreneurs Program.
Since 2005, the program has benefited
22,453 students, as well as their families,
the community and the economy. David's
journey and those of his fellow students in
Cajamarca show once again that Junior
Achievement prepares young people for the
real world by demonstrating the relevancy of
education and empowering them to own their
economic success.