{"id":15145,"date":"2016-08-31T11:43:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T15:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15145"},"modified":"2016-08-31T11:43:14","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T15:43:14","slug":"big-brothers-big-sisters-has-a-wow-moment-after-rough-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/big-brothers-big-sisters-has-a-wow-moment-after-rough-patch\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Brothers Big Sisters has a \u201cWow\u201d moment after rough patch"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a \u201cglimmer of hope\u201d on the horizon for Sarah Dame. <\/p>\n

Exceptional growth in York Region, and meeting the mentorship needs of the Region\u2019s children in need, have made the Aurora-based organization face \u201ca very rough few months,\u201d according to Big Brothers Big Sisters of York\u2019s (BBBSY) Executive Director Sarah Dame.<\/p>\n

BBBSY provides mentorship programs to local kids and meaningful relationships between \u201cBigs\u201d and at-risk or in-need \u201cLittles\u201d, typically serving between 525 and 540 kids per year.<\/p>\n

So far, 2016 has significantly bucked the trend. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn our first six months of the year, we served over 720 children,\u201d says Ms. Dame. \u201cThis means the needs are growing and it is sad that when needs are growing, our funds are declining. We\u2019re out there pounding the pavement as much as we can, but donors are inundated with requests. Everybody has their hands out and that is just the state of affairs right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cMentoring is such an essential service, but I think sometimes that is harder for us to communicate and we don\u2019t have the dollars to be as vocal as we want to be, but we have great support and it is a matter of having the dollars to get our word out.\u201d<\/p>\n

While one \u201cglimmer of hope\u201d is BBBSY being selected as one of 15 community partners set to share the proceeds from this month\u2019s Wild, Wild West Hoedown hosted by Magna International, BBBSY had a \u201cWow!\u201d moment of their own on Friday when the Wow One-Day Painting team arrived on the Industrial Parkway South doorstep to give their offices \u2013 and the home of one of their Littles \u2013 a complete one-day makeover.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year, when we get to the end of our peak season and we have reached all of our company goals, we look at it as giving back to the communities in which we work,\u201d said Wow\u2019s Kim Rood, looking over the BBBSY\u2019s assessment room, which was given a new coat of eggplant purple, noting it is an initiative that has taken root across Wow\u2019s North American franchises.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a complete surprise.<\/p>\n

Wow was connected to BBBSY by Mayor Geoff Dawe after Mr. Rood contacted him to be pointed in the direction of a community organization that needed a bit of help. Mayor Dawe facilitated that connection and, after assessing their offices, realised there was more they could do.<\/p>\n

BBBSY then ran a contest for their Littles asking them to write down their best \u201cWow moment\u201d in working with their Big Brother or Big Sister and a little boy in Markham was chosen for the home makeover.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be doing his bedroom and, because the size of the bedroom wasn\u2019t that big, I said I still have more people who can paint and we\u2019re going to be painting their living room and anything else we can do while we are there,\u201d said Mr. Rood. \u201cWe will probably be doing door, trim and baseboards and the team is going to be spending the whole day there painting until they are kind of tired!\u201d<\/p>\n

While the \u201cLittle\u201d and his family were having their own \u201cWow\u201d moment, so too was Ms. Dame, who says it is always a \u201cWow moment\u201d when someone in the community steps up to give back, particularly to help an organization like theirs. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re so small, sometimes it is hard for us to get financial support and this kind of support,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re really struggling. Hospital Foundations and Heart and Stroke and health-related foundations have huge offices and we have a pretty small office for the number of children we serve. We can talk about [these moments] all we want and we have passion, but when you hear [the moment] from a match? It\u2019s a wow moment when someone wants to give back and Kim just kept it going.\u201d<\/p>\n

And BBBSY will keep going, too.<\/p>\n

Last year, they launched a \u201cPlay Great\u201d program, which will keep kids active \u2013 and will be a program benefiting directly from Hoedown dollars. They are also looking to expand their In School Mentoring (ISM) program in which a volunteer mentor goes into the school providing one-on-one mentorship for an hour a week.<\/p>\n

This September, is Big Brothers Big Sisters Month and promoting ISM mentoring, and recruiting volunteers for the program, will be a primary focus. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have schools all wanting our programs and they want us back, but we only have as many volunteers as we can put in schools,\u201d says Ms. Dame. \u201cI can\u2019t pull everyone together and say, \u2018Let\u2019s do more programs!\u2019 because they are free and we don\u2019t have the money. We can\u2019t go and do more programs without the dollars. We had a very rough few months, but there is some glimmer of hope happening and I am excited about that. The team has never been stronger but the needs are growing. In my other life, I didn\u2019t see the need as much as I see it now and now I am presented with it every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re defining what a Big Brother Big Sister relationship looks like over the next century and our group programs are becoming such a need. There is tremendous impact there. You don\u2019t have to be a rocket scientist to know one-to-one has a greater impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a \u201cglimmer of hope\u201d on the horizon for Sarah Dame. <\/p>\n

Exceptional growth in York Region, and meeting the mentorship needs of the Region\u2019s children in need, have made the Aurora-based organization face \u201ca very rough few months,\u201d according to Big Brothers Big Sisters of York\u2019s (BBBSY) Executive Director Sarah Dame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/2016-09-01-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3Wh","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 06:08:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}