Be Awesome mentoring program gets boost from Jack in the Box

By Ethan McSweeney

Jack in the Box is donating lunches three days a week this summer to a Maricopa mentoring program for local youth after funding dried up.

The Be Awesome Youth Coalition, which runs a mentorship program for kids in Maricopa schools, found they were short on cash to keep the program running through the summer months, said Priscilla Behnke, program director. The program runs four days a week on a rotation through Maricopa, Santa Rosa, Saddleback and Maricopa Wells elementary schools.

The typical sources that provide the mentoring program funding — United Way and RICO funds, which are assets seized by law enforcement — weren’t able to do so this summer, Behnke said.

“I didn’t know how we were going to feed these people during the summer without this money coming in,” she said.

So, Maricopa’s Jack in the Box offered to bring lunch in for the summer for three days out of the week.

“This is something we wanted to do for the kids and for the community,” said Nicole Jordan, assistant manager at Jack in the Box.

The program has pooled resources or received other donations to fund lunch for the other day in the week, Behnke said.

The mentoring program from Be Awesome Youth Coalition, which is funded by Maricopa Ak-Chin CAASA, runs throughout the school year at Maricopa schools. The program was founded in January 2015 to provide positive role models to students, who are chosen by principals based on who would benefit the most from having a mentor, Behnke said.

Behnke said that the program has helped boost grades among students who participate.

The summer meant three months when the students would be out of the program, which Behnke wants to avoid.

For the summer program, students go once a week for four hours at one of the elementary schools to meet with their mentors.

“This has been huge,” Behnke said about the lunch donation, “because then they can stay the full four hours and it’s one less thing we have to worry about.”