I am passionate about Junior Achievement's mission because I believe we can't understate the importance of financial literacy as part of essential education, and the standard school curriculum does not adequately address it alone. So many of our students graduate without fundamental understanding of concepts like compound interest, savings, investing, insurance, retirement, credit, mortgages, loans, etc. Entering adult life without those basic concepts can lead to long-term hardship pretty quickly. So I support JA through both the Bowl-a-Thon and their periodic Financial Park workshops that they embed in the classroom.