Burger King of Jamestown recently provided award certificates to Jefferson Middle and Fletcher Elementary schools.

Shannon Volpe, Jefferson Middle School teacher, and Sandy Volpe, Fletcher Elementary School teacher, met with Kim Pritchard, Burger King district manager, to design certificates for their individual schools. Burger King donated 500 gift certificates to Jefferson and Fletcher schools. The certificates were used at Jefferson Middle School as part of their Classwide Peer Tutoring Program. During class, students work with partners to improve their vocabulary. Depending on how many words and definitions the students complete, they receive points. Once they reach a certain level, they receive a Burger King gift certificate. At Fletcher, the certificates have been designed specifically for Volpe’s “All Stars.” He is able to award his students for outstanding achievement, reading milestones and classroom participation.

“Burger King is always willing to get involved in their local community, especially with our local schools. We have reading incentive programs, perfect attendance and certificates of achievement to name just a few,” Pritchard said.

Burger King creates custom gift certificates depending on what the school is using them for so, for example, they can create certificates for individual classrooms or to improve targeted behaviors. They can also change the reward from the meal to a free ice cream or a kid’s meal depending on the age group.

“It is really fun to get rewarded when we make enough points to get the Burger King gift certificate,” said Josh Zielinski, Jefferson Middle School eighth-grader. “We can easily walk down to Burger King after school to get our snack and it’s a really nice thing that Burger King is doing for the kids when they do good things.”

Along with the incentive programs, Burger King also has two unique fundraising programs to offer to nonprofit organizations.