Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas, Inc.

The social problems addressed by the Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas program are the environmental dysfunctional cycles that prevent youth from realizing their potential. These include teen pregnancy, academic failure, abuse and domestic violence, dropping out of high school, juvenile delinquency and incarceration. Too many youth do not have the role models and mentors they need to overcome their environmental obstacles so they end up repeating the behaviors they were born into and the cycles continue. A mentor is a cog in the wheel, providing youth with different perspectives and the support to overcome obstacles and achieve success.

The innovation in what we do is that each youth has a different set of circumstances that can be addressed by the program. Each volunteer mentor is supported by professional agency staff and paired one to one with a child. Matches are made to last and based on similar interests, hobbies and geographic location. The needs of each individual child and the skills and life experiences of each volunteer are taken into account when making matches. This is a tailored, scalable solution to youth development problems. BBBSST is a unique community based program that seeks to address the root causes of each youth's problems by assessing the youth's environment and placing a volunteer in that environment who acts as a friend, support and guide. The volunteer meets regularly with the child for a minimum requirement of a year but the average length of a match is over 2 years for matches that meet in the community, and approaching 2 years for matches that start out in the workplace, which is a newer opportunity.

A historic mentoring study that found mentoring to have strong positive impacts on children, indicated that “Only organizations that develop an infrastructure similar to Big Brothers Big Sisters model can expect similar results." The program's success was attributed to the presence of staff support and the agency infrastructure, the “glue" of the mentoring process. (Impact Study, 1995). Since 1995, BBBSST has continued to focus in on and hone the elements of its service delivery system. This has resulted in BBBSST consistently out performing other mentoring programs in terms of both quantity and quality. BBBSST is the only mentoring program in town with a wait list of volunteers because it understands that volunteer recruiters are essential for a program that relies on volunteers, especially a one to one mentoring program. BBBSST also out-recruits many of its own affiliates across the country, many of which consider volunteer recruitment a lesser important function than match support in the sense that they have full time employees who support matches but recruitment is an add-on to other jobs and there is not full time recruiter(s).
BBBSST is also a leader in internally evaluating the effectiveness of its program both in terms of outputs and outcomes. No other mentoring program in San Antonio (that we have been able to find) can report its average match length, 6 and 12 month retention rates, volunteer yield rates, and strength of relationship scores. BBBSST also reports regularly on asset development in youth, risk behavior avoidance and aspirational beliefs. These capabilities sets us apart not only from most other mentoring programs, but also many other youth development approaches. All of the mentoring research has found that longer matches = stronger matches, so measuring how long a mentoring relationships persists is extremely important in facilitating student outcomes.

Numbers of Youth served:
1,808 youth were served in San Antonio in 2016
Over 1,000 new volunteers made an inquiry into the program

Length and Strength (2016 measured annually):
The average length of a community based mentoring relationship is 24.8 months
The average length of a school based mentoring relationship is 21.8 months
The longest match currently being supported has been matched for almost 11 years
Currently 85.1% of community based matches make it to the 6 month point and 58.1% to 12 months
In the school based program the 6 month retention rate is 91.3% and the 12 month retention rate is 67.1%
The average strength of relationship score for a match at the 3 month point is 4.42 (out of 5).
The Strength of Relationship measure utilized by BBBSST staff has assisted in increasing retention rates by up to 12% over the last year by helping identify matches with weak relationships early on.

Asset Development (2016– 8 of 21 measured annually):
Asset Area- % of students that improve or maintain asset
Self-confidence: 87%
Ability to make decisions: 78%
Have a sense of the future: 82%
Positive attitude towards school: 69%
Are more prepared to avoid delinquency, substance abuse, and early parenting: 81%

Education Outcomes (2016- measured annually):
Data shows that there are statistically significantly gains in the community based mentoring program in nearly every area and that 96% of students improved in at least 1 of 8 major categories.
94% of students report they will finish high school
79% expect to go to college
64% expect to finish college
58% reported decreased truancy

Workplace (2016- measured annually):
96% of student expect to graduate high school
84% plan to attend college

Resiliency & Protective Factors (2010)
100% of youth, identified as at-risk due to common risk factors, remained incident free
93% of youth feel better about themselves
88% feel they can make better decisions
87% feel the program taught them what is okay and what isn't okay