The past year has been an interesting year of successes, challenges, new faces and exciting opportunities for all programs! 2008 brought along with it many prospects for expanding programming into 2009 and I'm excited to share these with you.  

First let me share with you new faces to the programs team.  Stephanie Cobb, Mentoring Coordinator in the Match Program, joined us in September 2008 and is an occasional blogger. A recent graduate from Carleton University and Herzing College, Stephanie brings enthusiasm, compassion and fresh perspective to her Bigs, Littles and families. 

Annie Pham, Program Assistant to InSchool Programs also joined the team in September 2008.  Having recently completed her Bachelor of Social Work at Carleton University, Annie was looking for a position which allowed her to contribute her strengths such as attention to detail, organization and technical abilities while gaining experience working with children and youth. 

Both Stephanie and Annie have been welcome additions and have quickly become assets to our programs team.

Annie's position of Program Assistant to InSchool Programs was made possible due to funding received from the Ministry of Education.  Thanks to this funding for the 2008-2009 school year, we have been able to expand the Meet You In School, Mentoring InSchool and Go Girls! programs. We have reached new schools, new pockets of potential volunteers interested in working with children and in the upcoming term, Go Girls! will double in size!

This year will also see the launch of a revamped group mentoring program.  The pilot of Big Bunch started on January 20. Thanks to a generous donation from the Bank of America, a group of 5 Big Brothers and 10 Little Brothers on the wait list will get together once every two weeks for fun recreational and physical activities in a setting which fosters mentoring relationships. The pilot program will last 6 months and allow us to match 10 Littles who continue to wait for a Big Brother to spend time with weekly one-to-one. 

We are also very excited to have developed a group of BBBSO Ambassadors. With the help of Ken Godmere we held 3 workshops and trained 17 of our very own Bigs, Littles and parents coaching them to feel comfortable sharing the impact BBBSO has had on their lives. With the increase in speaking requests we received in 2008, we are lucky to have a great group of speakers available. We are looking forward to scheduling more workshops for 2009.

In this upcoming year, a priority remains to reach an ever expanding community, both in geographic reach, and in cultural diversity. Our InSchool Mentoring programs have been made available in Fitzroy Harbour and Stittsville for the first time this past year and we hope to serve new areas in 2009.  We are always looking for volunteers, especially Big Brothers and InSchool Bigs. A main priority remains to match all of the children who have been waiting for a volunteer.  2008 was our best recruitment year to date but we still have over 100 children on our wait list.  We hope to be even more successful in 2009 by recruiting more Big Brothers and reducing the number of children waiting. 

Look for us at a fair, speaking engagement, school, lunch ‘n learn or workplace near you!