BIG BROTHERS AND BIG SISTERS OF METROPOLITAN MILWAUKEE INC

Every child in Metro Milwaukee has potential, but many youth in our community need support to help them realize successful futures. Often, it takes just one additional caring adult to make a profound impact in the life of a child by guiding and supporting him or her on the path to productive adulthood and long-term prosperity.\n\nBig Brothers Big Sisters creates and supports strong, long-lasting one-to-one relationships between children facing adversity and volunteer adult mentors that consistently lead to positive youth outcomes. Our programming and our dedicated mentors empower youth to reach their full potential by succeeding in school, making healthy and responsible choices, growing socially and emotionally, developing positive relationships, building confidence, cultivating interests, and growing aspirations.\n\nEach year, Big Brothers Big Sisters serves more than 1,400 youth in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, live in single parent households, and/or have an incarcerated parent. We hold ourselves accountable for each child in our mentoring program achieving three priority outcomes:\n1) Educational success\n2) Avoidance of risky behavior\n3) Social and emotional development

Big Brothers Big Sisters provides youth facing adversity with professionally supported one-to-one relationships with volunteer adult mentors who guide them as they navigate life’s challenges, support them as they discover who they are and what they are capable of achieving, and inspire them to embrace long-term success.\n\nBig Brothers Big Sisters’ mentoring program offers three unique one-to-one mentoring options. In each, volunteers make a minimum two-year commitment to mentoring youth; engage with their mentee 3-4 times per month; and provide role modeling, friendship, and guidance to increase positive youth outcomes. These options are:\n\n1) Community-based mentoring: Youth and volunteer mentors meet throughout the community and spend time together engaged in activities they choose based on mutual interest.\n\n2) School-based mentoring: Students meet with volunteer mentors during or after the school day at one of 11 partner elementary or middle schools for educationally-focused mentoring.\n\n3) mentor2.0: High school youth who are low-income and first generation college students are matched with college educated mentors to promote high school graduation, post-secondary readiness, and post-secondary success. Mentor2.0 combines in-person mentoring with safe, secure online communication and a college-focused weekly curriculum.\n\nEach of Big Brothers Big Sisters’ three mentoring options utilize Big Brothers Big Sisters of America’s unique evidence-based one-to-one service delivery model, which includes:\n\n-Free service to youth, families, volunteer mentors, and schools.\n-Careful volunteer screening to ensure child safety.\n-Thoughtful matching of volunteers and children based on each child’s strengths and needs, shared interests, and personalities.\n-Comprehensive mentor training.\n-Ongoing one-to-one case management to every child, family, and mentor.\n-Integration of educational success strategies into all services.\n-Incorporation of prevention as a core principle to help youth make responsible decisions.\n-Parental engagement to involve them in their children’s mentoring relationships.\n-Strategic partnerships to provide youth with educational and cultural activities and experiences.\n-Scientific evaluation to measure outcomes and impact and drive continuous improvement.

Big Brothers Big Sisters has 44 years experience of proven, measurable success in providing one-to-one mentoring services to children facing adversity. Our dedicated Board of Directors, strong organizational leadership, and well-qualified and experienced staff work together to provide high quality mentoring services to at-risk youth.\n\nA strong focus on child safety, research, thorough evaluation, measurable proven results, and continuous improvement drive everything Big Brothers Big Sisters does and ensures youth have the individualized support and guidance they need for healthy development and long-term success. We are also financially stable and have achieved a balanced budget for the past 11 years.\n\nNATIONAL AFFILIATION\nBig Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee is an independent affiliate of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the nation’s oldest and largest youth mentoring organization. For more than 115 years, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has implemented, developed, and perfected its unique, evidence-based professionally-supported one-to-one mentoring model across the country.\n\nBig Brothers Big Sisters of America provides us with access to national standards, policies, and procedures focused on child safety; research and program development; evaluation systems and technology; and nationwide best practices shared by more than 250 affiliates across the country.

POSITIVE MEASURABLE RESULTS\nYouth in Big Brother Big Sisters’ mentoring program achieved the following measurable results in 2018:\n\n-77% maintained or improved educational expectations. For the class of 2018, 95% of Big Brothers Big Sisters seniors graduated from high school on time, and 76% of graduates enrolled in post-secondary education.\n\n-70% maintained or improved attitudes toward risky behavior. In 2018, 99% of youth in Big Brothers Big Sisters’ mentoring program avoided juvenile justice system involvement and 99% of girls avoided teen pregnancy.\n\n-72% maintained or improved social and emotional skills, leading to higher aspirations, greater confidence, and better relationships with friends, parents, and other adults in their lives.\n\nNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED MENTORING\nIn 2019, for the fourth consecutive year, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America presented the prestigious Pinnacle Award to Big Brother Sisters of Metro Milwaukee. This award is the highest honor a Big Brothers Big Sisters affiliate can attain and is achieved through delivering exceptional program metrics and outcomes, including high retention rates, quality case management, and fiscal stability. We were the only agency in the nation (of more than 250) to receive the Pinnacle Award four years in a row. This places our organization in the top 1% of all Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies nationwide.\n\nBig Brothers Big Sisters remains committed to maintaining a high level of success and providing “best-in-class” mentoring services to youth, families, and volunteers in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties.