Be a mentor, change a life for the better
January 12, 2007, Springfield News-Leader (Missouri)

By LISA SLAVENS

Through the ages, friends, community members and church elders, aunts and uncles have taken young people by the hand and helped them through life. These helping hands have turned lives around, providing guidance and hope. January has been designated National Mentoring Month. What better way to commemorate this month than to recognize the importance of mentors, seek to recruit additional men and women for this important volunteer role and thank those who have given so generously of themselves.

National Mentoring Month is a joint project of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Harvard Mentoring Project, and MENTOR. This collaboration has served to bring mentoring to the fore, but the act of volunteering to help guide young people is ages old. The first formal youth mentoring program which became Big Brothers Big Sisters began more than 100 years ago in New York City. Then, Ernest Coulter, a clerk in family court, called together the men's group of his church and asked them to stand with him to help young boys seek their dreams.

Today there are 250,000 Big Brothers and Big Sisters throughout the country mentoring young people through caring, one-to-one relationships. Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks locally served more than 1,200 children in southwest Missouri in 2006, more than 13,000 since the agency opened in 1983.

Mentoring in our community positively affects hundreds of children: children like Michael, whose father is in prison; he now spends time with Jim as his Big Brother. Janie, who is raised by a single dad with disabilities, has Meghan as her Big Sis. Diane, a career foster mother to nine children, has four of those children in positive mentoring programs. These are only a few of the hundreds of children who will face a brighter future because there are caring adult volunteers in our community. Providing a friend to a child every week, one-to-one, can be found with no other program.

Jan. 25 has been designated as "Thank Your Mentor Day." So get ready any special wishes you want to send: to a former teacher, a coach, a Big Brother or Big Sister or a special friend. We believe that signing up to be a Big Brother or Big Sister translates into a magnificent thank you. Big Brothers Big Sisters particularly needs men right now to help young boys find companionship and friendship that make a big difference to both the "Big" and the "Little."

Think about it. For more information, to volunteer as a Big Brother or Big Sister or to donate, go to www.bigbro.com or call 889-9136.

Voice of the Day
Lisa Slavens is executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks.