Big Brothers Big Sisters

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Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) is an international 1: 1 mentoring program for the individual advancement of children and young people. In it, mentors take on a temporary sponsorship: They spend a few hours a month with a certain child for at least a year. Participation in the program is free for children and young people. The mentors work on a voluntary basis .

history

Big Brothers / Big Sisters of Otero County -Bowl For Kid's Sake , April 2008: Members of the Alamogordo Desert Dawgs semi-professional football team

The founding of Big Brothers Big Sisters is credited to New York court clerk Ernest Coulter: he wanted to reduce the number of juvenile offenders he saw while working in court. Therefore, in 1904, he began looking for volunteers who would each serve as adult mentors to one boy. At the same time as Coulter's Big Brothers of America , girls were looked after (also in New York) based on the same principle. The loose group of women that had existed since 1902 later became Big Sisters International . Similar programs, independent or following the New York model, have been established in many North American cities. In 1922 common standards were developed which also laid down the principle of 1: 1 care. The individual programs were further combined and standardized in ever larger organizations until Big Sisters International and Big Brothers of America merged to form today's Big Brothers Big Sisters of America in 1977 .

In 1913, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada was an offshoot of the program outside the USA. An independent study in 1995 demonstrated the effectiveness of the American program, whereupon other countries showed interest in setting up similar programs. Big Brothers Big Sisters International was established in 1998 to enable the program to continue to be disseminated while adhering to common standards . There are now organizations in 13 countries that are recognized by Big Brothers Big Sisters International; More than 270,000 children are cared for in the corresponding programs.

One of the recognized organizations was the non-profit GmbH Big Brothers Big Sisters Germany (BBBSD) based in Ludwigshafen. In 2007 she opened her first regional office in Mannheim, which from then on put together and managed tandems in the Rhine-Neckar region. From 2008 the program was expanded. New offices were created in the Rhine-Main area (Frankfurt), in the Ruhr area (Essen), as well as in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Munich. In January 2011 there were 372 mentor and child tandems in Germany as part of the BBBSD.

In 2013, the management and foundation surprisingly decided to discontinue the project in Germany at the end of 2014. The reason is the withdrawal of the financial "Benckiser Foundation Future" from project funding. The Benckiser Foundation declared that it intends to invest in the nationwide mentoring project “Balu und Du” in the future. However, “Balu und Du” relies exclusively on young mentors up to the age of 30 and only supports disadvantaged children up to the age of ten. The quality standards and the density of supervision for the tandems are in no other mentoring program in Germany as high as they were at BBBSD. The foundation recently distributed around two thirds of the total budget of around EUR 3 million to the project. The now former BBBS boss Dr. Christoph Glaser is also the chairman of the foundation, so he cut his own funding. He justified this with the fact that BBS had too little effect compared to other mentoring programs. This assessment caused astonishment, as BBBS received, among other things, a seal of quality from the consulting and analysis company Phineo.

At the end of the program in 2014 there were 1200 mentor-child tandems across Germany. The decision to end BBBSD has sparked a storm of indignation among mentors. Around 1,200 mentors in Germany organized themselves in social networks and fought for the continued existence of the organization. The tandems were supervised and processed by the Stuttgart branch.

Independent of BBBSD, the Big Sister association has existed in the Rhineland since 1998 . V. , who arranges mentors for girls. The Big Brothers Big Sisters Deutsche Jugendhilfe gGmbH is a signatory of the Transparent Civil Society Initiative .

Is also recognized Big Brothers Big Sisters Austria , based in Vienna. In Austria, the work as a non-profit GmbH started in 2011 and will be continued from September 2014 by an independent non-profit association.

Mentors

Voluntary mentor

Mentors at Big Brothers Big Sisters Austria can become adults who have successfully passed the multi-stage admission process. This includes three references from the private and professional environment, a certificate of good conduct and a 90-minute personal interview. Mentors are prepared for their task in an introductory workshop. Your role should not be that of a tutor, or that of an educator or babysitter. Instead, they should devote time and attention to the children, and assume the role of adult listener and friend.

children

The target group are children between the ages of 6 and 16 from a wide variety of family backgrounds who benefit from additional support in addition to family and school. In many cases these are children with a migrant background or children of single parents. (2009: 62% of the participating children with a migration background; 55% children of single parents)

tandem

Full-time employees of Big Brothers Big Sisters Germany and Austria put together the so-called tandems of mentor and child according to interests and personality. Boys get a mentor, girls get a mentor.

The child and mentor do something together every one to two weeks in their free time. A total of around 8 hours a month should be spent in tandem. The meetings take place regularly for at least one year. An extension of the program after the end of the year is possible. The joint ventures can be larger activities, such as B. a visit to a museum or an event of the respective regional team. Smaller activities such as cooking together or board and card games are also suggested to the tandems.

The children can move outside of fixed role models and receive additional suggestions. The adults stay in contact with the younger generation and can pass on their experiences.

Use

Scientific studies show positive changes in children with regard to learning motivation and social skills such as communication and teamwork skills.

In the study “Making a Difference - an Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters”, the non-profit organization “Public / Private Ventures” (Philadelphia) examined the efficiency of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America on the basis of 959 young people from eight offices. She compared a group of young people between the ages of 10 and 16 who participated in the program with a control group. The first group was quickly assigned a mentor, while the control group was placed on a waiting list for the duration of the study (18 months). Data was collected from 959 young people, their parents and office staff. Key results of the group with mentoring compared to the control group without mentors:

  • The school behavior was better: The young people skipped school half as often and felt more competent doing their homework.
  • The relationship between adolescents and their parents / legal guardians has improved in the course of the mentoring (most notably among white male adolescents).
  • The relationship between adolescents and their peers was rated better than in the control group.

The American Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder has examined over 600 violence prevention programs in the US to identify the most successful model programs. The eleven selected “Blueprints” programs succeed in reducing crime and drug addiction among young people. In second place is Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Web links

Commons : Big Brothers Big Sisters  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Center for the Study & Prevention of Violence: Big Brothers Bigs Sisters of America - Program Summary ( Memento February 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), July 7, 2011.
  2. ↑ BBBS International: History of BBBS ( Memento of November 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), July 8, 2011.
  3. ↑ Big Brothers Big Sisters in Germany ( Memento from July 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Welt Online: The American Friend , July 9, 2011.
  5. ↑ http://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article119856688/Mentorenprogramm-fuer-Schueler-vor-dem-Aus.html , accessed on March 11, 2014
  6. ↑ Edgar S. Hasse: No more money for big brothers and sisters. In: welt.de . September 10, 2013, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  7. ↑ a b Big Brothers Big Sisters Germany closes at the end of 2014 , accessed on March 11, 2014
  8. ↑ Benckiser Foundation Future | Team. In: www.benckiser-stiftung.org. Retrieved January 3, 2017 .
  9. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/groups/bbbsd.selbsthilfe
  10. ↑ Big Sister: About the Association ( Memento from May 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), July 9, 2011.
  11. ↑ www.transparency.de ( Memento from September 5, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on March 4, 2014
  12. ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: annual report 2009 ) (PDF; 5.5 MB) p. 18@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / 217.160.149.62
  13. ^ Joseph P. Tierney, Jean Baldwin Grossman: Making A Difference - an impact study of Big Brothers Big Sisters ( Memento of April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Center for the Study & Prevention of Violence: Blueprints / Model Programs ( Memento from August 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive )