For the past nine years, BBBSO has hosted a week long day camp for our Littles called Kids n’ Kops where we partner up with the RCMP 'A' Division, Ottawa Police Service, Military Police, and Ottawa Fire Department...

 

 

J’aime prendre le temps de témoigner de la différence qu’un(e) Grand(e) peut faire dans la vie d’un jeune même s’ils ne réalisent que des activités simples ensemble.  Il est important que quelqu’un prenne le temps de faire cette constatation puisqu’il peut être difficile parfois pour les Grand(es) de le faire par eux-mêmes.   

J’ai récemment eu l’occasion de m’entretenir avec une mère (Sylvie*) qui m'a témoigné des changements qu’elle avait remarqués chez son fils (Joey*) après seulement quatre mois de parrainage par son Grand Frère…

 

 

This past year BBBSO celebrated its fourth year of the Go Girls! program. The 2009 - 2010 school year was our most successful year to date, with programs running in 17 schools throughout the Ottawa area. We had over 40 dedicated volunteers that delivered the Go Girls! program to over 200 children.

 

Every year we have the opportunity to work with terrific schools and match Big Brothers and Big Sisters with Elementary School Littles. We like to take the opportunity to recognize those terrific School Liaisons, as they help us to serve more children each year.

 

"What do other matches do for fun?"  This is one of the questions I get asked the most by volunteers struggling to find new activity ideas for themselves and their Littles.  In truth, I don't envy these volunteers.  This has to be one of the hardest parts about being a Big.  I'm sure many of us out there can relate to the difficulty of finding new and exciting activities for teens that don't break any rules.  So how do you find these activity ideas?  Well, I am happy to report that I discovered the secret to solving this puzzle one day while talking to a match that has been doing it for eight years.  As it turns out, the answer is right under our noses...

J'adore le mentorat scolaire de Grands Frères Grandes Soeurs d'Ottawa (GFGSO)! Jumelés pour la deuxième année, mon Petit et moi nous entendons très bien: nos rencontres ne sont pas toujours loquaces, mais il y a ces petits moments de grande complicité qui valent la peine de poursuivre la relation.

 

In light of our not-so distant office relocation, I thought that a blog on change would be very fitting.  So, here goes...

I'm sure we can all relate to the fact that as time goes on, things around us change.  Even though none of us wants to admit it, we ourselves change too.  Well I've come to realize that the same is true for matches. 

While change can sometimes be difficult, it can also be wonderful.  I was recently privileged enough to hear this touching story from one of my longer standing matches about the ways in which their match has changed over the years...

Last year brought forth many challenges for our Enrollment department.  We started off the year with 223 Bigs who were in process, and none ready to be matched.  Thanks to a phenomenal team effort, we were able to give a huge push over the spring and summer, at one point, staff members from nearly every program were conducting Big Brother and Big Sister interviews!  The result of this push, was the acceptance of almost 100 Bigs into our program - with a total of almost 150 Littles on our wait list, you can imagine how excited we were about this! 

We are excited to announce that 1103 children were mentored in 2009 across all our programs. This would not be possible without such a motivated and enthusiastic team of employees.

We are thrilled to be celebrating Eric Lapierre's third anniversary as a Mentoring Coordinator, Mentoring InSchool with Big Brothers Big Sisters Ottawa (BBBSO)!

We are very fortunate to work with incredible placement students year after year. This year we had an overwhelming request from College and University students that we could not take them all.  Corinne Miller is a 3rd year student in the Social Work program at Carleton University. Read on as she describes her experience.