Kansas City becomes Biztown: PayIt volunteers for Community Service Month

On April 8, employees from PayIt’s go-to-market team spent time volunteering at Junior Achievement of Greater Kansas City’s Biztown learning experience as part of Community Service Month.

By combining in-class learning with a day-long visit to a simulated town JA BizTown enables students to immediately apply classroom lessons to a real world environment. It includes 12 teacher-led sessions prior to a 4–5 hour visit to a hands-on simulated community, as well as a recap session following the in-person experience.

Volunteering through PayIt Forward, the philanthropic arm of PayIt, employees led fifth graders from Frank Rushton Elementary in Kansas City, Kansas, through day-to-day operations mirroring those of local companies such as the Kansas City Royals baseball team, JE Dunn Construction, Price Chopper supermarkets and the Kansas City Zoo.

PayIt team members were placed in the different businesses as coaches. Students were each assigned roles such as CEO, CFO, mayor and surveyor as they learned financial literacy, career readiness and entrepreneurism by completing tasks like leading all-hands meetings, distributing payroll, door-to-door sales, devising marketing strategies, and tracking project costs in spreadsheets.

“We had a blast supporting the kids as they used their natural talents and learned  new skills and new ways of thinking. I’m pretty sure we saw some future entrepreneurs in the making, and maybe we saved a few future companies from default—a few “CFOs” learned that it’s important to pay off your loan before spending all of the company’s money on other things.”

– PayIt Director of Finance and PayIt Forward volunteer Gentry Craig