Bechtel and INJAZ Bahrain Launch Interactive Version of JA Our Nation

June 8, 2020

Over the last few months, the world has become adept at online meetings and virtual classrooms. But creating educational content for an online environment isn’t easy. In fact, for INJAZ Bahrain and JA global partner Bechtel—a worldwide engineering firm—moving a JA program from a paper-based learning experience to online learning started long before the novel coronavirus emerged.

For decades, JA programs have delivered successfully in face-to-face learning environments, often in classrooms, where teachers and volunteers mentor students as they learn in a hands-on environment. But when coronavirus closed schools and sent more than 1.5 billion young people to learn at home, the need for online versions of JA programs became much more urgent.

One example is JA Our Nation, a program created by JA USA that focuses on the U.S. free-market system and encompasses work readiness and social-studies education. In the U.S., the program is volunteer-led and taught in 45-minute sessions designed for 10-years-olds. The program explains how the free-market system serves as an economic engine for businesses and careers and introduces the need for entrepreneurial and innovative thinking to meet the requirements of high-growth, high-demand careers and the concept of globalization in business. It was available only in PDF format. 

Interested in expanding to help more students in MENA, Bechtel provided a grant to INJAZ Bahrain to find ways the two could collaborate to help young entrepreneurs—especially in digital-learning formats. They settled on JA Our Nation as their first project, which took approximately six months to complete, from start to finish.

Launched in March 2020, INJAZ Bahrain’s interactive edition of JA Our Nation includes videos that introduce topics and discuss them. Students then interact with characters by answering questions to move the lessons forward. And not only is the program digitized, but it now includes a single-student option so students can participate in the program on their own time. It’s also translated into Arabic and tailored for Bahrain and its market system.

Thanks to JA’s global partnership with Bechtel, the hard work and innovation among INJAZ Bahrain staff, and the JA learning-management system (LMS) system that is being rolled out to the entire JA network, the program is available to all children in Bahrain; they do not have to have been previously enrolled in a JA program.

JA Worldwide is honored to be recognized as one of Bechtel’s four Signature Programs. Our organizations share an aligned passion to serve and reach youth in every part of the globe, and we’re grateful for Bechtel’s help to reach more youth in MENA. The digitization of programs like JA Our Nation ensures JA and INJAZ programs worldwide ensure as many students as possible can keep learning.

To access more digital JA programs, visit jaworldwide.org/keeplearning.