Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Heart of Georgia, Inc.

Big Brothers Big Sisters goals are to serve as many at-risk youth in our area as is possible - to help improve their education achievement, improve their social abilities, help them to realize their potential and have the support and guidance to graduate from high school, go on to secondary education or the military, and to become strong, productive, positive, giving members of our community.

Through the evidence-based Big Brothers Big Sisters program we provide carefully screened and trained mentors to work with the youth one-to-one in a strong match relationship either within the school walls or outside in the community. To ensure a long term relationship lasting a minimum of one year, we provide monthly support and monitoring for the mentor, the youth, and the parent/guardian - along with providing activities, workshops, and resources for the match and for the youth's family. We work with community partners to recruit positive volunteer mentors, and to provide workshops and activities for the matches and parents. We conduct frequent surveys with the mentors, the youth, and the parents to monitor and measure the positive effects on the child's development as well as provide aggregate data to indicate the effectiveness of our program.

The agency has been serving at-risk youth with one-to-one mentors for over 65 years. As a Big Brothers Big Sisters agency, we adhere to the evidence based "Standards of Practice" for all BBBS agencies, putting the safety of the child first in all actions. All of our core mentoring practices align with the standards outlined in the "Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring". Our staff are highly trained and have an accumulated 83 years of experience, and average of over 9 years per employee. We serve an average of 350-400 youth per year.

Over the past 18 years, the agency has provide more than 10,000 youth with one to one mentors. We have established a strong relationship with Robins Air Force Base, providing mentors for youth in the local schools. We have involved the area college students as mentors, worked with the fraternities and sororities to provide mentors and resources, and engage high school students as mentors to youth in the elementary schools. For the past several years, at least 90 of our current or former "Littles" (mentees) have graduated from high school - youth who were referred to our program because they were not on the path to graduation. And they not only graduated from high school, 905 of those youth went on to post high school education or the military. Our matches last an average of 34 months - providing support and guidance for hundreds of youth each year. In the upcoming years we will work more with youth involved with juvenile justice and youth affected by opiod abuse.