Giving back

Jacob Peterson hasn’t forgotten his roots and the help he needed to go onto college. And these days, he’s focused on helping kids who need similar guidance.

The Chico State graduate founded and has steadfastly developed the Junior Leadership Development Program (JLDP), a nonprofit mentoring program for North State youth. Peterson’s story of how he came to help kids goes back to his own childhood when he and his sister lived with their divorced and cancer-diagnosed mom in a low-income apartment in affluent Roseville.

Clean-cut and dressed in the casual garb of a Chico 20-something, Peterson’s personable manner stood out as he spoke of his past during a recent interview.

“We were very poor at the time, growing up,” he said. “We made do off welfare and disability … I kind of always had it reinforced at school by my friends that I had a different lifestyle from many of them.”

But, Peterson said, he was very close with his sister and his mother, whom he described as “the ultimate warrior when it came to raising my sister and me … she always had this vision for us that we would make it.”

When Peterson was 9 years old, a family at church took an interest and started spending time with them. In high school, the father of this family, now his mentor, told him, “You’re going to go to college!” The mentoring proved priceless, with Peterson and his sister developing “this really close relationship with them … it gave us a whole new outlook on what was possible.”

Although Peterson struggled initially at Chico State, he eventually settled in and began volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club of Chico as well as Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Since then, a series of connections, decisions and opportunities led him to form the JLDP, which is now in its third year with its annual banquet fundraiser coming up June 1.

It all started with a presentation Peterson gave at Table Mountain Juvenile Detention Facility while he was still a business student at Chico State. Lisa O’Donnell, a counselor at the facility, assisted him in creating a life-skills-focused mentoring program that was launched in December 2011. It proved to be a success.

“Jacob is able to identify well with the youth he serves,” O’Donnell said, “and his authenticity is evident in all that he does.”

Now, Peterson has developed and run JLDP in other institutions, including Fair View High School and Hearthstone School. Fair View Principal David McKay spoke highly of the program. Students who have completed JLDP have “displayed tremendous interpersonal growth and an increased sense of resiliency,” he said.

The program includes an element where facilitators go into a school or facility and teach the students specific life skills as well as practical skills, such as résumé-making. Following that, the students are paired with mentors who meet with them weekly for a semester, helping them with, among other things, considering colleges at which to apply, determining a career path and applying for financial aid.

Peterson said he realized he needed “to start molding this so it’s not just what I’m doing on the side, but my life’s work.”

Various people and organizations have helped him in this process, including Chico Stewardship Newtwork. JLDP continues to evolve, and “pieces are just falling into place,” he said. “I feel that as people catch wind of what we’re doing and what we’re about, they want to be a part of it.”

Chico writer Grant Branson, who has mentored students and helped with the program’s development, credited Peterson with an ability to connect with the youth he helps.

“Because the development of the JLDP curriculum is rooted in Jacob’s own life experiences, which mirror many of the same things that at-risk youth [have experienced],” Branson said, “it speaks directly to them in an empathetic context. You can see the expression of, ‘At last, somebody who understands me,’ written on the faces of the kids who are there.”

Another community member who has assisted with JLDP is Chicoan Rory Rottschalk, a civil engineer and community activist who said he’d read letters written by JLDP participants, in which he noticed “several critical themes that stood out: The kids had a vision for their future, they recognized it was their responsibility to pursue that future rather than make excuses, and they’d been introduced to a community interested in helping.”

Looking toward the future, Peterson said his vision for JLDP is to expand to additional schools and youth. Reflecting on the past three years of developing the program, he recalled a defining moment watching one of his JLDP mentees at the Fair View graduation.

“We made eye contact when he was reaching for his diploma,” Peterson said. “If I could define what life is really all about, that is a moment I’d really want to capture—impacting someone in a positive way and getting to see the result.”