HIGH ACHIEVERS

One of the best parts of my job is meeting people who make a difference. It's rare though that you get to meet hundreds of them all at the same time. But it happened yesterday at the Reagan Building.

I was honored to be a part of the Junior Achievement Worldwide Leadership conference yesterday. It was a day of inspiring speeches. The talks centered around how you meet the needs of students worldwide. These are some of the best and the brightest discussing the pressing issues facing the world of education. People like Penn State President Graham Spanier who gave the keynote address.

It's remarkable to be in a room where people speak so passionately about how they are trying to reach kids. Take the example of the leader of the campaign in India. He points out how tough it is to make a difference when millions of students are in need of help. Many of them will never complete school. But he keeps plugging away. Or the woman in the Middle East who confirms that lots of doors were slammed in her face, but she kept going to door after door, never giving up. The result: In Jordan she has grown the number of students in JA from one thousand to 70 thousand. Or the woman from South Africa who talked about how difficult it is to discuss the high tech revolution taking place in our country as students she works with live in squalor in the township of Soweto and report to schools without windows.

You walk away marvelling at the issues they all face. Each person at this conference is confronted with their own set of challenges. The challenges aren't just confined to countries overseas. You'll hear people here in the U.S. talking about at risk kids in inner city neighborhoods. The tasks seem so daunting until you look at these people of passion.

I got to meet the Worldwide CEO Gerry Czarnecki who is helping to guide JA forward during these turbulant times. He gave an inspired speech about the future of Junior Achievement. For those of you who don't know Junior Achievement takes the skills students learn, like math, science, and economics and they make them real. They demonstrate how the skills you pick up in school are needed once you go to work in the real world.

I want to applaud their efforts and welcome all of the JA reps from around the world who are in our town this week. Keep up the good work. As I said in my remarks there is no greater legacy then touching the lives of children, and it's something they are doing every day.