Big Brothers Big Sisters Case Study

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America was founded in 1904 by Ernest Kent Coulter (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, 2015). At the time Coulter was a court clerk for New York City and he saw that more and more boys were coming through his courtroom. He also recognized that many adults wanted to help these kids stay out of trouble. So he made it his goal to find volunteers and that marked the beginning of Big Brothers. Around the same time, a group called ladies of Charity were befriending girls who came through the New York Children’s Court and their group became known as Catholic Big Sisters. Both groups worked independently until 1977 and that’s when Big Brothers Association and Big Sisters International joined forces and became Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, 2015). Big Brothers Big Sisters uses a network of donors, partners, family members, and advocates to match at-risk youth with caring adult role models. This program is a federation of more than 420 agencies that help children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 16 (Hess, Orthmann, Wright, 2013). Many of these children and adolescents come from disadvantaged

Their study found that when children were matched with a mentor they had a higher level of trust in their parent and were 37 percent less likely than their peers who were not enrolled in the program, to lie to their parents (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, 2015). Littles were also 46 percent less likely to start using drugs, 27 percent less likely to start drinking and 32 percent less likely to hit someone (Hess, Orthmann, Wright, 2013). In addition, youth who were mentored skipped half as many days of school as control youths, had better attitudes towards school and better school performance, and improvement in peer and family relationships (Hess, Orthmann, Wright,