With National Mental Health Day occuring earlier this week, we wanted to take a moment and highlight some of the proven mental health benefits of being connected with a carefully selected adult mentor can lead to improved mental health in young people. 

The last few years especially have highlighted the importance of mental health awareness, especially in children and teens. The CDC states that almost 50% of young people have experienced feelings of persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in the last 12 months, and just under 40% have experienced poor mental health during the Covid pandemic years. 

Having a strong network of people in their lives who support them unconditionally goes a long way in helping youth manage the stressors of daily life and the mental health challenges they may bring. In a study conducted by Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, a significant percentage of former Littles reported that their experiences with their Bigs left them feeling better about themselves, helped them go on to lead fulfilling adult lives, and aided them in establishing healthy and satisfying relationships. 

A Deeper Look 

Measuring mental health doesn’t just involve the presence or lack of sadness, anxiety, or fear. It also includes looking at how comfortable a person feels with themselves, others, and moving around in the world around them.  According to this Guider article, having a reliable adult mentor (Big) in their lives benefits the mental health and well being of kids in a multitude of ways, including: 

• Increases Self Confidence
  
• Strengthens Communication Skills
  
• Teaches New and Different Perspectives
  
• Improves Sense of Well Being
  
• Increases Life Satisfaction 
  

A Youth.gov study  found that having a Big reduces the risk of a child getting involved in illegal drug and alcohol use and drastically decreases the chance of them acting out violently and destructively. Having a mentor has also been shown to increase social and emotional skills development in kids, improve their relationships with their parents, and encourage them to pursue higher education goals, all of which definitely contribute to a young person’s mental health.  

Benefits for mentors

The young person involved in a stable mentoring relationship is not the only one to benefit. The mentor can also experience significant improvement in their well being, including an increased sense of self esteem, accomplishment, and patience, as well as deeper insight into and understanding of their own experiences as a young person. 

Helping to improve their mental health and well being is just one of the many valuable reasons to become a mentor to a child. There are also so many wonderful young people waiting for their very own Big mentor, through both our community and our school based match programs. 

Interested in helping to improve the life of one of them? Give us a call at 734-975-0933 or sign up for a volunteer info session today! ​

​Last year, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washtenaw County launched our school based program to much success. This year, we are excited to announce that not only is the program returning, it’s expanding, providing the community with even more ways to become involved in BBBS! The response to last year’s program was higher than expected, so our needs have also increased. We had eleven 2nd-4th grade Littles matched to a Big last year and 13 additional kids on the waiting list, and our hope for 2022-2023 is to find Bigs for those waitlist students and match an additional 60 children from the 2nd to 9th grades. 

Why become a Big? To change a young life for the better in concrete ways! According to youth.gov, having a close, one on one relationship with a reliable adult mentor benefits school age children in a multitude of ways, including increased high school graduation rates, increased school attendance, higher college enrollment rates, stronger relationships with parents, teachers, and peers, and increased self esteem and confidence. 

These relationships also benefit the mentor, with adult volunteers experiencing an increased understanding of youth and dedication to their well being, increased self esteem, and a greater sense of community connection, making the Big/Little relationship a win all around. 
Our school based program options are also an excellent way to become a Big Brothers Big Sisters mentor without having to invest quite  as much time and planning as being a community based Big requires.  

Interested in becoming involved? Here are our three school based mentoring program options:

Lunch Buddies

Lunch Buddies is our original school based program and focuses on Bigs spending 45 minutes per week visiting their Little at school, having lunch, answering ice breaker questions, and playing a game or going outside together. The pilot program ran in Estabrook Elementary school during the 2022-2022 school year and this year will also run at Erickson Elementary. 

Big Buddies

Our new Big Buddies program is similar to Lunch Buddies, only rather than matching elementary students with an Adult mentor from the community, we’re matching them with a local High School student. This is a wonderful opportunity for younger students to bond with older students closer to their age and get a glimpse into what their own educational futures might look like. It also gives the older students a chance to develop their own socioemotional learning, executive functioning, and feelings of accomplishment and self esteem. Big Buddies will run exclusively in Estabrook Elementary during this school year. 

MentorU
​
We are also launching a new MentorU program for the 2022-2023 school year. This program will focus on matching 9th grade students from Ypsilanti High School with a community based mentor who will visit them weekly to discuss and explore their college and career plans. 

Becoming a mentor to a school aged youth is a fantastic way to positively impact not just their lives, but yours as well, and with the new school year quickly approaching, there’s no time like the present to get involved! 

If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, email Rachel.Sulkowski@BBBSWashtenaw.org, call  734-217-4550, or sign up for an informational session by clicking here




 
 

March is of course both Women’s History Month and National Reading Month both, and one of the many ways women have made a tremendous impact on the world is through their contributions to children’s literature. 

Some of the most beloved children’s books of all time were written by women. From cherished 20th century classics such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit to modern titles like Brown Girl Dreaming, women have contributed so many of the books we loved to read ourselves when we were young, and now love to read to the children in our lives.

Let’s take a more in depth look at five fantastic female children’s book authors who push past boundaries to transform children’s lit and add joy and happiness to so many of our lives! 

1. Beatrix Potter 

Born in rural England in 1866 to a long line of gifted artists, and encouraged from a young age to pursue her own passions for nature and art, Beatrix Potter’s most famous work-and her career as an author and illustrator in general-came about entirely by accident.

In 1893, Potter began sending very short illustrated stories to her former governess’ children and in 1900, she took the snippets she’d written to them about an adventurous little rabbit into the first draft of the book that would eventually become published as The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902. Potter would then go on to have an extensive and highly successful career, publishing two storybooks a year until about 1913, when she married and began focusing more on her love of farming and land conservation.

By the time of her death in 1942 at age 77, Potter had not only written 30 books, 23 of which comprised the beloved and best selling children’s book series that included the whimsical tales of Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten, Squirrel Nutkin, and Mr Tod, she also left 14 farms and over 4,000 of preserved natural lands to the British National Trust. 

2. Jaqueline Woodson

Brooklyn-based writer Jaqueline Woodson has made it her mission to transform literature for Black children, young adults, and adults in her 25+year career, and that passion has made her one of the most respected and awarded writers publishing today. 

Beginning in 19995 with From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun, Woodson has penned over 30 powerful volumes of children’s literature, young adult fiction, and poetry dealing with everything from the history of slavery and segregation to interracial relationships, social class, and gender and sexual identity. In her renowned modern day classic Brown Girl Dreaming, Woodson uses beautiful prose to create a fictionalized, young adult memoir of her own family’s experience with segregation in the south and is a superb example of what Woodson herself has stated is her writing goal:  “I (want) to say to my young self “You’re loved. You’re beautiful. You’re complicated. You matter.” I know that by saying this to myself with each book I write, I am saying it to every reader who has ever felt otherwise."

Woodson’s books have won multiple awards, including the Coretta Scott King Honor, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a slot as a finalist for the National Book Award, and three Newberry Honors. Woodson has also served as a MacArthur Fellow, the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature from 2018-2019.

3. Beverly Cleary

Although we know Beverly Cleary as a children’s book author, she actually began her career as a children’s librarian. It was during her tenure at the Yakima Washington public library that she encountered a little boy who would ultimately change her life-and the course of children’s literary history. As Cleary stated in an interview later in her life, the young child “faced me rather ferociously…and said, ‘where are the books about kids like us?’ And it changed my whole attitude.” That change in attitude served her especially well when she began writing, and to this day her books are renowned for being some of the first to deal with the real life issues children often dealt with, as well as their complicated relationships with the most mysterious aspect of their lives-the adults around them. 

Her innovative storytelling and clear and direct style of writing were apparent and appealing even in her first offering, Henry Higgins, published to great success in 1950. The book also introduced her most famous character, the lively, clever, and creative Ramona Quimby. Often unfairly pegged as a pest and a troublemaker by some critics and readers alike, Cleary herself defended Romona as a fierce lover of the world around her, describing her in Romona the Pest as ”... a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”

After those early successes, Cleary went on to become one of the most prolific and beloved children’s authors in the world, penning over 39 award winning books that have been translated into over 14 languages and adored by children in more than 20 countries before her passing in 2021 at the age of 109. Her influence continues even posthumously: after first appearing in the book Romona age 8, Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) Day is now celebrated in schools and homes across the country on April 12th, in honor of Cleary’s birthday. 


4. Grace Lin

Born in upstate New York to Asian immigrants, Grace Lin burst onto the children’s literature scene in 1999 with the gorgeously written and illustrated The Ugly Vegetables, the story of a young Chinese-American girl who learns the beauty of community and the value of all things, regardless of their appearance. 

Since then, Lin has written twenty additional acclaimed picture books, early readers, and young adult novels, including Dim Sum for Everyone, A Big Bed for Little Snow, Thanking the Moon, and the Ling & Ting series. Her YA book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon won the Newberry honor and she has also won a Caldecott Honor, a Geisel Honor, the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and has also been a National Book Award Finalist. In 2016, the cover of Lin’s YA novel When the Sea Turned to Silver was displayed at the White House, where Lin was also recognized as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling by President Obama. 

Lin, who now lives in Massachusetts with her family, is also a podcaster, occasional commentator for New England Public Radio, and a reviewer for the New York Times. Her first and most enduring love however remains writing and illustrating because, as she has said, “books erase bias, they make the uncommon, everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal."

5. Meg Medina

It was not until she was in her 20’s and came across Sandra Cisneros’ novel House on Mango Street that New York Times bestselling author Meg Medina found a book character with similar life experiences as hers, inspiring her to focus her picture book and young adult fiction writing career on writing the kinds of stories she would have loved to have read as a child. 

Of Cuban descent herself, Medina infuses every book she writes with her desire to represent Latino culture and young people in a joyful and celebratory way. Titles such as Mango, Abuela, and Me, The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind, Burn Baby Burn, Elelyn del Ray is Moving Away, and Tia Isa Wants a Car showcase her lyrical and at times heartbreaking writing style and have won her several awards, including a Margaret Wise Brown Prize in Children’s Literature, a Crystal Kite Award, and a Pura Belpré Author Award. Her Merci Suárez series of young adult novels have also been awarded a Newberry Medal and the most recent installment, Merci Suárez Can’t Dance, was named one of the 50 most anticipated YA novels of 2021 by Kirkus Reviews. 

In addition to her successful writing career, Medina works on community projects that support literacy, young girls, and Latino youth and is also on the faculty of Hamline University’s Masters of Fine Arts in Children’s Literature. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia. 

There are of course far too many wonderful women children’s book authors, past and present, for us to possibly list them all in one short blog, but these five are some of our favorites. Interested in learning more? Check out Brightly’s Authors Share Their Favorite Kids’ Books About Girls, Written by Women! 

​

​ig Brothers Big Sisters of Washtenaw County is excited to announce that we are bringing our school base program back. Our school base program is called Lunch Buddies. Lunch Buddies will be held at Estabrook Elementary School in Ypsilanti. The Little’s will be 2nd to 4th graders and the Bigs will be individuals in the community who are willing to center youth, be a role model, and will help us ignite the power and promise of youth to reach their full potential. Bigs & Littles will meet once a  week during lunch in the gym. During Lunch Buddies, Bigs & Littles will eat lunch with one another, do an icebreaker, then with their remaining time have free time to explore the playground, do a craft, or play a fun game in the gym. Like our community based program, we are asking Bigs & Littles to be matched for a minimum of a year, and to get together once or twice a month during the summer at a BBBS event. We are hoping that programming will begin in January 2022. If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity you can sign up for an informational session by clicking here.

Our goal with school based mentoring is to increase youth matched in  developmental mentoring relationships. The Search Institute shares developmental relationships are marked by  five elements: express care, share power, expand possibilities, challenge growth, and provide support. These 5 elements make a powerful impact in the lives of young people..The long lasting mentoring relationships created during programming have a tremendous impact. They increase the strength of the relationship, which leads to positive longer term outcomes, and provide ongoing relationship development and learning opportunities for all parties.

We recognized the majority of the kids that are currently on the waiting list for our Community Based Mentoring program were from Ypsilanti. We needed to find another way in which to serve them with a trusted adult to support them socially, emotionally and academically. We wanted to find new opportunities for connections between young people and the adults that were eager and willing to support them.

It is an important time to bring school based mentoring back to the program. Students are facing another hard school year with COVID-19 still very prominent,  along with a whole new set of challenges being back in the school building. Some students have reported issues with self-esteem, bullying, and heightened emotions. An article from NBC  found other challenges including,  feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and having a hard time focusing. Issuelab highlighted the impact a school based program has on youth, benefits included: increased academic performance, improved attitude toward school, stronger peer relationships and interactions, improved attitudes and connectedness toward parents, and higher self esteem. The school base program is also impactful for youth to have another adult to hang out with and talk to. 

Issuelab also highlighted the benefits for an individual volunteering for a school based mentoring program. They noted that  with  a school based program there is a less intensive time commitment than community based programs, which may be appealing to individuals such as students, those with families, or full-time jobs. Being a mentor has so many benefits. According to youth.gov, mentors can benefit from mentoring youth by gaining insight into childhood and adolescence, have a sense of accomplishment, and increase self-esteem. Mentoring youth is a great way to be the mentor you felt like you needed growing up. There is no better time than right now to get involved and be back in the school to make an impact in the community.

​A Fall Evening with Big Brothers Big Sisters is a casually elegant event that brings together the best and brightest of the business and philanthropic communities in Washtenaw County in support of one-to-one youth mentoring. Individuals and corporate partners who believe in the power and promise of youth, gather in support of the proven methods used by Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across the globe to defend the potential of kids right here in our community.


A Fall Evening with Big Brothers Big Sisters
Sunday, September 12, 2021
5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Hosted by Wayne and Shelly Jones at The Boathouse at Lakefields

There are Many Ways to Participate  

Attend
Whether you’ve attended A Fall Evening with BBBS in the past or you’re considering making this your first appearance, you are invited to attend. Expect sensational surroundings in an open-air, all-outdoor setting: a serene lake, lush gardens and nearby vineyards. Look forward to delectable food, elegant music, an exciting live auction of a select number of exceptional experiences and inspiring words from a former Big and Little on the impact BBBS has made on their lives. 

Donate
Inspired by the mission, but can’t attend A Fall Evening with BBBS? Your donation is appreciated and will help BBBS continue it’s important work in the Washtenaw County community for years to come.

Sponsor
Businesses and/or individuals that sponsor BBBS events demonstrate their belief in the inherent potential of kids in this community. Guests at A Fall Evening are loyal to businesses that support the BBBS mission.

Money raised at A Fall Evening with BBBS is critical to the success of our mentoring work with youth in Washtenaw County. Thank you in advance for your support.

 Learn more about A Fall Evening with BBBS today!

SOCIAL MEDIA SHARE: A Fall Evening with Big Brothers Big Sisters is a casually elegant event that brings together the best and brightest of the business and philanthropic communities in Washtenaw County in support of one-to-one youth mentoring. Individuals and corporate partners who believe in the power and promise of youth, gather in support of the proven methods used by Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across the globe to defend the potential of kids right here in our community. Get your tickets today!


ARTICLE SUMMARY:  A Fall Evening with Big Brothers Big Sisters is a casually elegant event that brings together the best and brightest of the business and philanthropic communities in Washtenaw County in support of one-to-one youth mentoring. Individuals and corporate partners who believe in the power and promise of youth, gather in support of the proven methods used by Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across the globe to defend the potential of kids right here in our community. Money raised at A Fall Evening with BBBS is critical to the success of our mentoring work with youth in Washtenaw County. You can support A Fall Evening with BBBS by purchasing tickets, donating or becoming an event sponsor.