As president and chief operating officer of Connecticut Light and Power, Jeff Butler understands the importance of workforce readiness. And he’s not just concerned about the job skills of the nearly 2,000 employees he leads. Butler and his company, an operating company of Northeast Utilities, also have an eye on — and an investment in — tomorrow’s workers through a multi-year funding grant to Junior Achievement of Southwest New England.
In fact, the Northeast Utilities Foundation has committed $60,000 and about 200 volunteers of NU, CL&P and Yankee Gas over the next three years to support Junior Achievement’s “JA in a Day” program at select elementary schools in Enfield, Middletown and Waterbury.
Through the comprehensive half-day program, NU employees will teach students — at each grade level — about the basics on financial literacy, workforce readiness, and entrepreneurship.
For Butler, it’s important for children at an early age to see the connection between education and future employment — particularly in disadvantaged communities. It’s also important, Butler says, that students know about various career choices at a young age and understand the basics of how capitalism works.
For more than 30,000 students from kindergarten through high school, Junior Achievement of Southwest New England is providing the building blocks of that understanding. At the elementary school level, the program is designed to build gradually upon the curriculum year after year. For instance, notes Jeremy Race, development director for Hartford-based JA, kindergarteners learn about financial issues in terms of themselves; by third grade, it’s a city-wide focus and by fifth grade, a national focus. “We want students to understand the role they play in a larger community,” Race said.
That’s certainly a concept that JA volunteers understand. In fact, more than 2,200 volunteers representing more than 100 companies helped implement JA’s curriculum last year, including 65 from Northeast Utilities companies.
For Butler, the volunteer component is a critical element of JA’s success. “All of our Northeast Utilities volunteers are successful in their careers and can be role models to kids,” he said, “whether they’re [CL&P] linemen or running a finance department.” Or the president and chief operating officer of a statewide utility company.
Yes, Butler — a former Board member of a JA organization in California — has done six tours of duty as a JA instructor. Those experiences have not only given him a greater appreciation for the art of teaching, but also underscore the value he sees in JA’s programming.
“JA really provides a very interactive, hands-on curriculum,” Butler said. One class, he recalled, involved 5th grade students having to disassemble and reassemble pens as individuals and in groups. “The lesson helped students understand unit production versus mass production and the resulting productivity.”
Those, of course, are the types of issues that Butler grapples with as a president and COO. He’s glad to know that his potential future workforce — through NU’s investment in Junior Achievement — is starting to understand those lessons now — between recess periods.