Since its inception, our services have grown as our community’s needs have changed. Today, our Chapter provides a variety of services throughout Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Leelanau Counties, including:

• Offering free relief services to victims of home fires and other disasters, responding to an average of 30 fires annually and supporting emergency personnel during multi-alarm emergency calls, providing them with food and water.
• Managing a Services to the Armed Forces program, which provides Emergency          Communications and other assistance for Service members and their families.  touching the lives of over 3,000 people in 2009!
• Teaching Health and Safety courses throughout the community, certifying nearly 5,000 people each year in CPR, First Aid and Babysitters Training.
• Providing no-cost Disaster Preparedness and Pandemic Flu Awareness seminars, yearly reaching thousands.

Our growing Service to Armed Forces program continues to provide unique assistance to military personnel and their families. In the event of an emergency, we serve as the point of contact between military families at home and their deployed service member. In addition, we also participate in Re-Integration and deployment events helping family members reconnect emotionally after service members return home or helping them prepare for the anxieties associated with the separation due to deployment.

Many of these services are provided on a 24-hour on-call basis, throughout our local jurisdiction. Responses to disaster incidents, as well as emergency communications with the Service to Armed Forces program, operate using teams of dedicated, trained and compassionate volunteers, which includes many of those from our office team, who are also volunteers.  Without these volunteers, we would be unable to provide the services to the community to which we have committed. Since its inception, our Chapter has been guided and driven by volunteers, including our entirely volunteer board of directors, comprised of caring individuals from our local community.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwestern Michigan is a one of hundreds of independent Big Brother Big Sister agencies across the country.  We are affiliated with our national organization Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, which has been in existence for over 100 years.  While our national organization provides the program framework for what we do, each agency is responsible for its own funding to support the local need.  We have a dynamic and energized volunteer board of directors that leads our organization along side paid professional staff that carryout our mission and put mentoring relationships together between volunteer mentors and children in need.  Throughout our service area we have local volunteer committees who advocate on our behalf in our outlying service areas.  As well we are supported by hundreds of generous individual and corporate donors, as well as funded from our own fundraising initiatives.  Still our need is great.

The mission of Big Brothers Big Sisters is to empower community youth by serving their social, emotional, and educational needs through professionally supported one-to-one  relationships between a child in need and a positive mentor.  The children served by Big Brothers Big Sisters are among America’s most vulnerable, often living in a single parent household, growing up in poverty, or coping with situations far beyond their years.  Parents come to us in search of a positive adult mentor for their son or daughter.   The relationships we put together and the length of time we support them (upwards of 12 years) is what brings great outcomes for children.  As we say it is the “Little Moments” that a mentor and a child share together that leads to “Big Magic” for the children.  Our local and national statistics prove that mentors do make a difference.  Children matched with a Big Brother or Big Sister mentor are:

46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs
52% less likely to skip school
27 % less likely to begin using alcohol
1/3rd less likely to resort to violence
More confident of their performance in school
More apt to believe they would attend and finish college

And for an adult who had a Big Brother or Big Sister in their life when they were younger there are even more measurable impacts.  Adults who had a Big Brother or Big Sister mentor when they were a child say having been a little contributed significantly to the person they are today.

90%  agree their Big made them feel better about themselves.
85%  felt it made them more confident in life
90%  felt their Big provided stability when they needed it most.
81%  felt having a Big changed their perspective on what they thought possible in life
62%  are very satisfied with the relationships they have today with their own spouse, family, and friends.

What matters most to the children we serve was not so much what they did with their mentor, but the fact that they had a caring adult in their lives.  Because they had someone to confide in and look up to, they did better in school and at home, avoided violence and substance abuse at a pivotal time in their lives when even small changes in behavior could change the course of their future.

Big Brother Big Sister staff is made up of paid professionals with degrees in psychology, social work, and child development backgrounds.  Each brings a unique set of skills to be able to recruit and screen mentors, interview families and children seeking a mentor, match a child with a mentor, and support the relationship for its duration.  Each case manager is dedicated to their work and is a great asset to the organization.  But our volunteers are one of our most important assets.  They make a tremendous commitment to their Littles.  Our Big Brothers and Big Sisters come from all walks of life.  Some are high school age some adult age; some are in college or working, or retired.  All have a love of children and a desire to make a difference in someone’s life much like someone did for them when they were a child.   We all have had important people in our lives that made a lasting impression on us.  At Big Brothers Big Sisters we make that happen for children in a systematic, caring, and supportive environment so that the children we serve have a chance in life that they may otherwise not experience.  Our volunteers too come away from the experience with a greater understanding of themselves and what a child of today faces.  They too have positive outcomes for their experience.  Volunteers develop new interpersonal skills, experience higher morale and renewed enthusiasm for life and work.    That along with the benefits for children in our program is why we do what we do. 

As a non-profit youth serving organization that brings memorable experiences into the lives of children through the gift of others giving of their time, we do not benefit from “things”.  What makes the difference in the lives of the children we serve is having the financial resources to safely place an adult mentor into their life who will give them a rich and enlightening experience that will change their life for the better.  To do this we need financial support and awareness in the community for the need for mentors.  As a prevention based program, we are investing in years of support to a child to help them reach their full potential.  This takes time, staff, volunteers, and the financial investment form the community on an on-going basis.  On average, the cost to make a match and sustain it for one year is $1,000.  Imagine a child in our program who enters at age 6 and can remain in our program until age 18.  For as little as $1,000 per year we can help that child reach their full potential and become a contributing member of the community.  Swing Shift and the Stars will help us reach thousands of people in the region who have benefited from having someone important in their life care about them and guide them, with our message.  It will inspire others to support a mentoring relationship and perhaps even consider becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister themselves.  We can’t do what we do without both of these elements: Financial support and volunteer mentors.  This is what excites us about Swing Shift and the Stars; that, and perhaps having one of our greatest and most agile on his feet donors – Kelvin Shaw- representing us on stage.