REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG?By Richard Bran0ctober 5, 2010

The Big Brothers Big Sisters Mission

•The Mission is to help children reach their potential through one-to-one relationships and both nurture children while strengthening communities.

•Big Brothers Big Sisters is not your typical organization. Through a volunteer supported mentoring network, B.B.B.S helps children realize their potential and build their futures.

Big Brothers Big Sisters makes meaningful, monitored matches between adult volunteers (“Big’s”) and children (“Little’s”), ages 6 through 18, in communities across the country, essentially providing a rich soil for growing a one-to-one relationship built on trust and friendship that can blossom into a future of unlimited potential…

How is This Done?

Community-Based Programs

Spending time together out in the local community is essentially how “Bigs” and “Littles” develop their relationship.

After all, to change a child’s perspective of the world, it helps to spend some time out in it.

Community Programs are one on one outings in which the participants do things they enjoy together, like but not limited to:

•Taking a walk in the park •Going to museum •Listening to music •Hanging out •Playing games

At the end of the day, it's really all about starting a friendship, providing guidance and inspiring them to reach their potential. 

Community Need BBBS nurtures children and strengthen communities.

Children participating in this program are:•46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs •27% less likely to begin using alcohol •52% less likely to skip school

And it couldn’t be done without you!

You are an integral part of the growing process.

More than 70% of our children waiting for a Big are boys, but only 3 out of every 10 inquiries to volunteer come from men.

Disproportionately the children we serve and those waiting to be matched are African-American and Hispanic boys.

Appeal to Funding Institution 

National research has shown that positive relationships between “Littles” and their “Bigs” have a direct and measurable impact on children’s lives. By participating in our programs, Little Brothers and Sisters are:

•More confident in their schoolwork performance

•Able to get along better with their families

Appeal to Funding Institution

Government entities such as the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services have both contributed to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America in order to reinforce their work on behalf of America’s at-risk children.

It is because National research has shown that positive relationships between “Little’s” and their “Big’s” that the afore stated entities have an interest in B.B.B.S.

We are all products of our environments, some insouciant and others awfully precarious. A community program which enables those from polar opposites of a spectrum and everything in-between an opportunity to enrich one another’s lives is a quintessential faculty to the growth of our nation.

Through this volunteer based undergird B.B.B.S. has gone beyond conceptualization and organized a tangible community based program emphasizing the growth of our nations adolescent minds, in an attempt to successfully propel our youth beyond the threshold of adulthood.

Though the children participating in the B.B.B.S. program had always been applying the fundamental aspects governing the idea of metacognition and similar principles thereof, most were not even aware.

As the older, more experienced, “Bigs” interact with their “Littles” they reinforce these ideas and positively influence their “littles” to explore and evaluate the world in which they live with a different perspective. It is because of the confidence the “Bigs” instill in their “littles” that this is possible. In school these latent ideals slowly become overt.

How Can You Volunteer?

1.Fill out an online application 2.Be willing to provide references 3.Participate in an in-person interview 4.Go through a background check

www.bbbs.org