Description
Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Sacramento Area is a youth mentoring organization, serving children, ages 8-18, primarily from single-parent families and families that, for a variety of reasons, face significant challenges that create barriers to successful child development. Children served live in Sacramento, Yolo, South Placer and San Joaquin Counties. We provide carefully selected, screened, and trained volunteer mentors, typically adults, who become companions and role models for the children served. All mentoring relationships are on a one-to-one basis. Mentors, known as Big Brothers or Big Sisters meet weekly or alternating weeks with the child that has been specially chosen for them using criteria such as common interests, backgrounds, geographic locations, and specific preferences that either the volunteer or the child and parent may have. The children in the program, known as little brothers or little sisters, come from diverse backgrounds, but typically live in low-income families, have at least one parent missing in their lives due to death, incarceration or abandonment, and most need a positive role model to help guide them. Mentoring activities may occur in the child's community or at a specific program location, according to the program in which the child is enrolled. Typically, our relationships are community-based, with the mentor and child deciding when and where to meet each week. Professional staff screen and train the volunteers, match them with the right child and then follow the relationship for as long as the child is enrolled--providing supervision for child safety, on-going traing as needed to make the mentor successful, and providing emotional support to the family and volunteer as needed. Research shows that children with a big brother or big sister mentor do better in school, get along better with others, resists drug and alcohol use and have less or no involvement with the juvenile justice system.
