{"id":25667,"date":"2020-01-16T17:46:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T22:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25667"},"modified":"2020-01-23T18:54:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T23:54:54","slug":"big-brothers-big-sisters-marks-50th-anniversary-with-renewed-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/big-brothers-big-sisters-marks-50th-anniversary-with-renewed-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Brothers Big Sisters marks 50th anniversary with renewed mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Big Brothers Big Sisters was founded on the principle of\nproviding mentorship for boys and girls in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the stated mission upon the organization\u2019s founding\nmore than a century ago, and it was the stated mission when Big Brothers Big\nSisters was brought to what is now York Region 50 years ago this year. But, as\nthe organization marks its half-century of fulfilling this mandate, they are\nidentifying more ways to support the \u201clittles\u201d they serve and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last fall, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of York launched\na significant rebrand. Gone were the purple figures of two individuals coming\ntogether to form a heart. In their place are three threads interwoven,\nrepresenting \u201cthe organization, the family and the mentor coming together to\nforge a new path,\u201d according to Sarah Dame, Executive Director of Big Brothers\nBig Sisters of York (BBBSY).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt demonstrates the power of the three and what we can do\ntogether,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rebrand of the organization is significant and\nintended to let the community know they were \u201creally repurposing, reimagining\nand reinventing ourselves as a movement across the country to engage a whole\nnew audience in an effort to grow our movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor us, the fiftieth anniversary ties into our new\nmission and vision,\u201d says Ms. Dame, noting they are building on what she\ndescribes as \u201c40 developmental assets\u201d which will be measured in the kids they\nserve to make sure nobody is left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we know from research, when you look at family and\nchild services, one thing that is the same across the board, a gap, is a lack\nof a positive adult role model,\u201d says Ms. Dame. \u201cWe have always been able to\nmeasure self-esteem and self-confidence in some of the pieces, but what we\u2019re\ngoing to be doing around these 40 developmental assets is working more with our\nvolunteers so they have a bit more of a specific goal when they are working\nwith their little brother or little sister to be consciously focused on some of\nthe developmental assets that we want to see. If you\u2019re looking at a child who\nis facing adversities, which is where our focus will really be moving forward,\nwe might be blessed to have all the developmental assets, but when you go down\nthe checklist, looking at a child from a newcomer family or a family who is in\nfinancial crisis, experiencing the loss off a parent, someone who is ill or\ndealing with mental health, we want to be able to measure the differences in\nsome of these assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou might only see seven to ten [assets] in a child who\nis facing adversities. We want to make sure that children and youth that we\nserve in our one-to-one program has every benefit of a mentor and that we\u2019re\nelevating and enhancing them from what I think has been traditionally known. It\nis so much more than a nice-to-have friendship and that has a lot to do with\nthe new mission statement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last century, the mission of Big Brothers Big\nSisters has been to provide those positive role models for children in need,\npairing them up with suitable adult volunteers and spending valuable quality\ntime with them. Over the past 100 years, the organization has grown to become a\nrecognized leader in the field of mentorship, but times change. They aim to not\nonly maintain that leadership role in providing mentors, but evolve to meet the\nneeds of a changing community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These changes, says Ms. Dame, include an increased\nemphasis on addressing mental health challenges in our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to make sure that we are addressing mental\nhealth in an appropriate way, that our volunteers are trained to measure that,\u201d\nsays Ms. Dame. \u201cOur mission statement hasn\u2019t changed significantly, but the\npower of the wording and the commitment is what is changing. We have always had\nlife-changing mentoring relationships, but we really want to ignite and empower\nour kids to reach their full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this end, BBBSY is strengthening its relationships\nwith like-minded organizations, including Blue Door Shelters and 360 Kids, both\nof which provide shelter services for youth. BBBSY, Blue Door Shelters and 360\nKids put their heads together this past summer to look at service gaps and how\nthey can work together to support youth who are transitioning back into housing\nto keep from stepping backwards. The result in an increased effort in providing\nmentorship opportunities for young adults between the ages of 16 and 24,\nwhereas regular BBBSY programming has typically catered to youth between the\nages of six and 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re coming together to provide mentors who are trained specifically in those areas by 360 Kids and Blue Door Shelters,\u201d says Ms. Dame. \u201cAll of our national standards training still has to exist, everything under our community-based one-to-one matches had to exist in those matches, because it is what we would call a mature match, there are some differences that would allow our mentors to be involved in a different way. It wouldn\u2019t be taking [you] out weekly on an outing, it is more how am I going to [support someone] who is going into housing, is living in one of the shelters, is living in 360. It can be meeting with them once a month to talk about job opportunities, helping them with their resume, looking more at life past where they are now and what it looks like moving forward.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this, however, will require funding and Big\nBrothers Big Sisters of York is starting the year optimistically. Having lost\nsome funding from the Region of York in 2018, the past year was a rougher one\nfor the organization. They are going into 2020 buoyed by the fact that some of\nthis Regional funding has been restored to them to spearhead these initiatives,\nand they are also hoping to get a funding infusion from both the Ontario\nTrillium Foundation as well as some of their signature annual fundraising\nopportunities that will be bigger and better than ever to mark their Golden\nAnniversary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next Week: How you can get involved with helping make Big Brothers Big Sisters of York\u2019s vision for the next 50 years become a reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big Brothers Big Sisters was founded on the principle of providing mentorship for boys and girls in need. This was the stated mission upon the organization\u2019s founding more than a century ago, and it was the stated mission when Big Brothers Big Sisters was brought to what is now York Region 50 years ago this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25667","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\/2020\/01\/2020-01-16-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6FZ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 11:15:19","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\/25667","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=25667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}