Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago is a mentoring program that matches youth with adult volunteers to help young people grow into productive, caring individuals. Founded in 1904 to help boys in New York courts, it merged with a similar program for girls and expanded across the US. Today, BBBS of Metropolitan Chicago serves the Chicago area and counties in Illinois and Indiana. Research shows youth in the BBBS program are less likely to use drugs and alcohol, skip school, or get into fights compared to those not receiving mentors. Now over 100 years old, BBBS continues its mission of bringing positive role models into children's lives.

1. Big brothers, big sisters: helping
young children since 1904
By Yosef Meystel
Image courtesy of
Amy Claxton at
Flickr.com

2. Imagine a big family with a lot of siblings and a dynamic of
education and support. The older siblings teach the young ones to
face life and pass them information based on their experience and
the things they have lived. It is a small scale mentoring program.
Well, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago works the
same way but in a much larger scale. Big Brothers Big Sisters´ idea
of helping young children that haven’t had many privileges in life is
through an “older” example so they can understand and live their
life in a productive, honest and safe way. This charity uses a
mentoring style program, like the mentoring a big brother or a big
sister can give you when you are young, to teach the children that
are part of the program. In this program, the big brothers or big
sisters are called Bigs and the mentees or little brothers and sisters
are called Littles. Let’s take a look at their story and the proven
impact they have had in the community across Chicago and the
country.

3. It all started in 1904, when a young New York City court clerk
named Ernest Coulter was witnessing a phenomenon that
caught his attention: he was seeing more and more boys come
through his courtroom involved in minor problems due to
inactivity or lack of support or education. He quickly saw that
adults could be involved in a child´s life by helping them
through some obstacles in life and to have hope on what they
were doing as human beings. In addition, these adults could
also help some children to literally stay out of trouble and live
a productive life. In this same moment, the Big Brothers
movement was technically born.
Around the same years, a movement called Ladies of Charity,
which would later become Catholic Big Sisters, was appearing,
and their mission was to reach out to girls that were passing
through New York children´s court and help them do their
social rehab process.

4. These two organizations later in the years crossed their paths
and in 1977 they were officially named “Big Brothers, Big
Sisters of America”. They had worked in many projects before,
but it was this year that they officially joined forces and
became what they are nowadays.
In 1968, the Big Brothers association was included in the
Chicago chapter and the named was changed to the Big
Brothers, Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago. After many
important events and many members that came and went, in
2007 Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago acquired
DuPage County, IL and Lake County, Indiana and made them
part of their events and programs. And in 2010 , Big Brothers
Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago merged with Big Brothers
Big Sisters of Lake County, Illinois.

5. After more than 100 years, Big Brothers Big Sisters of
Metropolitan Chicago remains true to its principles and the
idea that motivated them to start and grow -bringing caring
role models into the lives of children- is still intact. Today, Big
Brothers Big Sisters has a proven impact in the community
and the children that they educate. In 1994 and 1995,
Public/Private Ventures, an independent Philadelphia-based
national research organization, looked at over 950 boys and
girls from eight Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across the
country. The agencies were selected for their large size and
geographic diversity. The results were amazing and prove
that in an era where teenagers are considered impossible to
reach, even though there are so many ways to communicate,
there is still hope to communicate with them.

6. From the 950 chosen children, almost half of them were randomly
chosen to be matched with a Big Brother or Big Sister. The others that
didn’t get a mentor were assigned to a waiting list. The matched children
met with their Big Brothers or Big Sisters for a year, every 3 months.
Researchers surveyed both the matched and unmatched children and
their parents on two occasions, when they first applied for a Big Brother
or Big Sister, and the other one again 18 months later. Here are some
approximate results for the Chicago area and their teenagers that were
within the program and had a Big assigned for them:
They were 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs;
They were 27% less likely to begin using alcohol
They were 52% less likely to skip school
They were 37% less likely to skip a class
They were 33% less likely to hit someone
The Littles (young teenagers that are part of the program) were more
confident of their performance in schoolwork and getting along better
with their families.
This study proves that Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago is
having a great impact on their area of influence. You can find more
information at www.bbbschgo.org