Big Brothers Big Sisters is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children and youth reach their full potential by pairing them with caring adult or teen mentors. Through positive developmental relationships, the organization aims to help young people overcome adversities such as bullying, social isolation, and financial stress, empowering them to build resilience and thrive.
We spoke with Sarah Hughes, Director of External Relations, to learn more about how Big Brothers Big Sisters is making a meaningful difference in young lives and how the community can step up to support their mission.
Describe your charity/non-profit/volunteer work in a few sentences.
Big Brothers Big Sisters aims to have all children and youth that come into our programs reach their full potential by pairing them with a caring adult or teen mentor. Through this pairing and growing a positive development relationship our children and youth are able to overcome the childhood adversities they are facing, to improve their social and emotional competencies and go on to lead fulfilling lives with the community.
What problem does it aim to solve?
Currently of the children we see 86% have 4 or more adverse childhood experiences that are limiting their resilience in life. 70% of them are experiencing bullying, 61% have mental health concerns in their home life, 55% are experiencing social isolation, and 55% are exposed to financial stress. By being paired with their trained mentor, we are able to help build them a healthy relationship to grow their resiliency and ability to overcome these issues, thereby preventing larger issues later in life.
When did you start/join it?
2023
What made you want to get involved?
I love our mission, vision and work, I believe and see the benefit in what we do, and I need to work somewhere that I value the work, it’s important to me.
What was the situation like when you started?
We were coming out of a COVID world and stabilizing, we’d had to adapt our programs and were adjusting to changes in society around needs for our services and changes in attitudes and desires around volunteering.
How has it changed since?
We are now in a position to grow our programs again, we are back in more schools, which is great, but the volunteerism is still down in the city and the economy is turbulent.
What more needs to be done?
Volunteer! We have more than 150 children and youth ready on our waitlist, ready to be matched with their mentor, we don’t have the volunteers.
How can our readers help?
Many people think it is a large commitment to be a mentor and they are right in that it should be something that is a considered choice. Being paired up with a vulnerable youth is a responsibility but the impact to the mentors is just as life-changing. It doesn’t need to be hockey tickets and dinners every week, it’s choosing to spend intentional time every couple of weeks with someone who needs you and living your life with them in it, go for a walk, buy groceries, volunteer somewhere else together, show up and care by being there.
Do you have any events coming up?
We have our Report to the Community on June 18th, where people can come and learn about our work, we have a variety of other events throughout the year.
Where can we follow you?
PAY IT FORWARD: What is an awesome local charity that you love?
I can for Kids, rather than being another food bank, they work on empowering families to feed themselves.
