Renee speaks with President & CEO Andy Fleischmann of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of CT who shares important info on how you can be a mentor!
National Mentoring Month is a campaign held each January to promote youth mentoring in the United States. It was launched in 2002 and is spearheaded by the Harvard School of Public Health, MENTOR and the Corporation for National and Community Service – now AmeriCorps.
National Mentoring Month focuses on how we can all work together to increase the number of mentors to make sure young people in our communities have dependable, inspirational adults to look up to and follow in their footsteps. National Mentoring Month celebrates mentoring, and the positive effect mentoring can have on young lives. The goals of National Mentoring Month are:
· Raise awareness of youth mentoring in various forms
· Raise awareness of the benefits of youth mentoring
· Recruit individuals to mentor, especially in programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters that have waiting lists of young people
· Promote the rapid growth of mentoring by recruiting organizations to engage their constituents in mentoring.
Since the mid-1960s in Connecticut, Big Brothers Big Sisters has operated under the belief that inherent in every child is incredible potential. As the nation’s largest donor and volunteer-supported youth mentoring network, Big Brothers Big Sisters makes meaningful, measured matches between adult volunteers (“Bigs”) and children (“Littles”) – ages 5 through young adulthood – in communities across the state and the country. We develop positive relationships that have a direct and lasting effect on the lives of young people.
To learn more about Big Brothers Big Sisters, youth mentoring, or how to become a “Big” or a “Little”, click here!