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14 New York Nonprofit Press www.nynp.biz September 2004 AGENCY OF THE MONTH BIG BROTHER BIG SISTER continued from page 13 may be fearful about going outside,” says Kelly. In a particularly moving partnership with the New York City Fire Department, BBBS also matches firefighters and firefighter families with kids who lost a firefighter father. A total of 400 kids participate in 9/11 programs. Luks has overseen the expansion of BBBS programming beyond its traditional 30th Street headquarters on the East Side of Manhattan. “We found that the majority of the kids on our wait lists were coming from the outer boroughs,” says Kelly. The agency opened a Bronx Office in 1997 and a Queens office in 1999 to make the program more accessible. Another office, focusing on foster care prevention, is in East New York, Brooklyn. The agency has also built a new institutional infrastructure for its matches through school-based and work-place programs. The school-based programs, which began in 2000, bring adult volunteers to the Littles’ school once a week during their lunch hour. The program focuses on children specifically referred by teachers and school guidance counselors and several Manhattan schools are currently participating. Luks is excited about the Work- Place Mentoring programs which BBBS runs in cooperation with 32 local corporations. The program brings kids to corporate offices for a few hours twice a month where they can do homework, learn about careers and acquire life skills. Kids benefit from the experience. And, so do the participating corporations and their employee volunteers. In a 2003 study, a great majority of volunteers reported positive feelings regarding the program’s effect on their work life, interaction with co-workers, loyalty to their corporation and self esteem. “This is going to be an area of major growth,” says Luks. “We have to convince more and more companies that these statistics are real.” The program, which is 14 years old, currently serves 600 children. Its staff currently occupies the major part of BBBS’ new office space on Fifth Avenue and 28th street. In addition to running its own mentoring programs, BBBS has become a primary source of training and technical support for other social service agencies wanting to add mentoring components. In 1992, the agency opened its Center for Training and Professional Development and began offering one-day workshops for other agencies interested in learning more about mentoring. Over time, interest grew and in 1998 BBBS partnered with Fordham University School of Social Work to offer a semester-long, 32 hour Mentoring Supervisor Certificate Program. The program covers such topics as volunteer screening, liability and insurance issues, matching adults and youth, supervision of volunteers, identifying risk factors, group work and how to close out the Big-Little relationship. “Initially, we had one group of students each fall and spring,” says Karen Heindel, Director of the Center. “That grew into two groups each fall and spring and then we added a summer session. We currently run five different sessions each year training 125 individuals. Since the fall of 1998, we have trained 592 individuals, representing 386 agencies.” BBBS also offers a range of technical assistance for other mentoring programs as well. “Once people take the course, we are available to them for ongoing TA at no charge if they want us to sit down and review their recruitment materials, their interview forms, their application or help them develop their curriculum for training their volunteers.” BBBS will even provide on-site training for volunteers at other mentoring agencies. The agency also operates Borough Mentoring Networks in each of the boroughs where staff of mentoring programs can meet monthly to share knowledge, skills and resources. A Professional Development Workshop Series geared to the needs of professionals offers sessions on a variety of mentoring-related topics. BBBS supports an additional 4,000 volunteer/child matches at other mentoring agencies through these training and technical assistance programs, says Luks. Juvenile Justice Mentoring Program Reaches Kids Who Need it Most When Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City (BBBS) began its Juvenile Justice Mentoring Program (JJMP) as a pilot project in 1992, it was something different. Historically, parents reached out to BBBS seeking supportive adult role models that might help keep their kids out of trouble. JJMP turned this approach on its head. The new program went out looking for reluctant parents and kids who already were in trouble. “The negative thing is that the kids have been in trouble,” says Andre Pabon, Director of the program. “The positive thing is that they have been caught. So, we know who we are working with. We are able to identify and address the problems. Everything is out in the open.” JJMP serves four separate types of youngsters – kids who are already involved in the court system and are adjudicated, kids who are delinquent and acting out, siblings of court-involved youth and children of incarcerated parents. “The kids in our program are usually first time offenders,” says Pabon, “with offenses ranging from robbery and assault to weapons possession.” Ricardo Torres was referred to JJMP and his Big Brother Jimmy Crespo after getting into trouble. Ricardo looks to Jimmy as a positive role-model. Pabon acknowledges that working one-on-one in an unsupervised situation with a teen who has already been convicted of a crime might seem pretty intimidating to potential volunteers. “This program also isn’t right for every kid,” explains Pabon.“These are kids who have been caught up with groups of friends. They are followers who want to be in the ‘in-crowd’ and don’t know how to say no.We are trying to get them back on the right path so they don’t get re-arrested.” JJMP provides extra training for volunteers and lots of additional social work support. “Every social worker has a beeper where parents, youth and volunteers can contact us at anytime of the day -- 24 hours -- to help deal with issues and problems.” At JJMP, social workers supervise only 35-40 mentor pairs compared to 55 or 60 in the traditional BBBS program. “We get a really great cluster of volunteers who feel this is something where they can make a bigger impact in turning a kid’s life around,” says Pabon. “It is much more of a challenge for some volunteers. “We joke around that volunteers don’t have to have been arrested themselves to be in this program,” Pabon continues. “It is a plus if a volunteer has grown up in the inner city and understands what youth are going through. But, if someone just has the capacity to relate with youth, we will help them with training and support from the social workers and these relationships work just as well.” Youth are usually somewhat skeptical about an initial referral to JJMP. “Most of the time the youth are reluctant at first,” says Pabon. “That is something we have come to accept.” JJMP actively sells the program to the youth and families who are referred by police, judges, and the Departments of Probation and Juvenile Justice. “We do our orientations one on one with the youth and their parent,” says Pabon.“We take them through it step-by-step and show them what is in it for them.” In the end, Pabon believes that most kids and parents come to see the program an opportunity. As with the traditional BBBS programs, participation in JJMP pays off. BBBS reports that rearrest rates for those previouslyarrested youth who came to JJMP was less than 20% compared to 78% for youth released from state facilities run by the Office of Children and Family Services.
September 2004 New York Nonprofit Press www.nynp.biz 15 AGENCY OF THE MONTH FOUNDATIONS New York Women’s Foundation Seeks Grant Proposals Council Member Magarita Lopez (left) with BBBS Board Chair Ed Gardner and Board President Laura Parsons. celebrate the renaming of 30th Street as Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City Way in honor of the organization’s 100th anniversary. The work with these widely varied mentoring efforts has lead Luks and BBBS to be strong advocates for the development of standards to accredit mentoring programs and mentoring supervisors. “This is a field involving intimate relationships but without standards,” says Luks. He cites United Way estimates that there are as many as 25,000 volunteers working in mentoring relationships mostly as add-on components to local after-school, recreational and youth development programs. “When we ask them how they match kids and adults, they tell us that Mr. Jones down the street is a nice guy and Johnny doesn’t have a father,” says Kelly. “When a mother drops her child off at a program, she should know that the staff have skills and the volunteer has had a background check,” says Luks. He emphasizes his point by noting that outside research showed 90% of programs completing the Mentoring Supervisor Certificate Program go back and change their method of screening volunteers. The answer? Training, staff certification and program accreditation, says Luks. To this end, BBBS has been a leading advocate, as part of a 140 member statewide coalition, for the Safe Mentoring Act legislation introduced by State Senator Nicholae Spano (R- Yonkers) and Assemblywoman Vivian Cook (D-Queens). The bill would establish a voluntary certification program for mentoring supervisors, and require mentoring programs to conduct criminal background checks for all potential mentors. The certification program would be administered by the Office of Children and Family Services, while individual agencies would be responsible for ensuring that criminal background checks are conducted. Despite the growth in mentoring programming at BBBS and elsewhere, there is still a strong need for additional mentoring opportunities. “We support 3,000 matches ourselves and 4,000 through other agencies for a total of 7,000,” says Luks. “In New York City alone, there are 650,000 kids living in single parent homes of which 365,000 are below the poverty line.” For information about Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City programs contact 1-888-BigsNYC or www.Bigsnyc.org. The New York Women’s foundation (NYWF) is accepting applications for its 2004-2005 grant year. Programs that help low-income women and girls and that are focused on community organizing, economic security, girls’ positive development, health and reproductive rights, or violence against women will be considered for grants of up to $35,000 each. “The New York Women’s Foundation funding makes a difference in the lives of women and girls in New York City. NYWF’s grants promote innovate solutions to problems low income women and girls face—solutions developed by the women and girls themselves,” said Angie Wang, the Foundation’s Program Director. The deadline to submit an application is Septembr 21, 2004. More information is available at NYWF’s website, www.nywf.org. The Foundation is frequently the first institution to offer significant support to women-led community-based nonprofits. Last year the Foundation gave away over $1 million to 40 organizations. Since its inception, the NYWF has given away over $8 million. Advertise with NYNP It’s Effective, Inexpensive and Fast!
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