Expanding the Reach of Youth Mentoring Through a Scalable Site-Based Model: Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Beyond School Walls Program

Authors

  • Sara Lin
  • Christie Mun
  • Jesse Moore

Abstract

Summary

Youth mentoring has been found to help youth succeed academically and thrive socially. Organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters have found that youth mentoring increases the likelihood that mentored youth will make positive and responsible decisions, leading to increased rates of grade progression, better relationships with families and friends, and reduced rates of youth violence (Tierney, Grossman, and Resch 2000).

Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern Pennsylvania (BBBS SEPA) facilitates mentor-mentee relationships for at-risk youth in the Greater Philadelphia region (Philadelphia, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties). BBBS SEPA has been an innovator in the delivery of its services by successfully translating its traditional community-based model into a more structured model in the form of site-based mentoring. BBBS SEPA’s newest site-based mentoring program is Beyond School WallsSM, a program that brings youth to corporations to meet with their mentors, corporate employees. The mentees reap the benefits of the traditional mentoring model while being exposed to a professional setting. The model also allows volunteers to mentor in a way that is more structured and may be more convenient for them.

Big Brothers Big Sisters relies on an all-volunteer mentor base. Its traditional model relies on individual volunteers within the communities who approach the agency in order to become mentors. The Beyond School Walls program allows for BBBS SEPA to recruit larger numbers of volunteers at one time and to reach an untapped source of volunteers. The implementation of site-based programs has allowed BBBS SEPA to grow and become the fourth-largest of BBBS’s 380 agencies. This growth has allowed BBBS SEPA to reach previously hard-to-reach groups of at-risk youth. Reaching more youth, especially those at highest risk, increases the potential impact of BBBS SEPA’s programs and results in an increased social return on investment.

Published

2010-05-10

How to Cite

Lin, S., Mun, C., & Moore, J. (2010). Expanding the Reach of Youth Mentoring Through a Scalable Site-Based Model: Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Beyond School Walls Program. Social Innovations Journal, (3). Retrieved from https://socialinnovationsjournal.com/index.php/sij/article/view/7645

Issue

No. 3 (2010): Issue 3 | Spring 2010

Section

Featured Social Innovations

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Copyright (c) 2024 Sara Lin, Christie Mun, Jesse Moore (Author)

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