A-B exec spearheads Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Urban Expansion Project
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri has announced the initial goals of its Urban Expansion Project, an initiative designed to significantly increase the number of mentors serving children in low-income urban neighborhoods of St. Louis and St. Louis County.
The volunteer recruitment campaign, called St. Louis Cares-Mentor 700, will have as its General Chair Johnny Furr Jr., vice president of urban marketing and community affairs for Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.
The campaign seeks to raise $700,000 to fund the 700 youth-mentor matches. Because of the care that Big Brothers Big Sisters takes in recruiting, screening, training mentors, and supporting and supervising the matches, each match costs about $1,000.
The agency seeks to match 700 children with Big Brothers and Big Sisters in 2007, the first year of the Urban Expansion Project. In seeking the 700 adults who will serve as mentors to these young people, Big Brothers Big Sisters is placing special emphasis on attracting African-American volunteers.
“Ninety percent of our urban market waiting-list youth are African-American, and as the number of parents requesting African-American mentors increases, we simply don’t have enough to meet the need,” said Becky James Hatter, President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri.
“We know that our future mentors are out there, and this project will develop the partnerships necessary to identify and attract this specific group of volunteers.”
The St. Louis Cardinals have signed on as a sponsor, while Alpha Phi Alpha, Associated General Contractors of St. Louis, NAACP, 100 Black Men and the Black Engineers Association are the first partner organizations to offer their support.
James-Hatter said the organization is undertaking this campaign in response to increasingly troubling figures on the number of children in the St. Louis area who are in need of mentors. According to several local and national studies and surveys, the number of “seriously at-risk youth” is put at about 80,000 young people.
The numbers are a primary reason Furr agreed to chair the volunteer campaign. “We have the ability to make a difference in the lives of our young people before they lose hope,” he said.
“We know there are problems, but none of those problems are impossible to solve with the support, concern and assistance of a caring mentor. We just need to make the community aware of the need and engender their participation. I know we can do it, and I’m looking forward to reaching everyone we can to make it happen.”
The St. Louis Cares-Mentor 700 campaign will put a particular focus on providing mentors for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Amachi initiative, which seeks to place mentors with children of incarcerated parents. There are approximately 13,000 such children, on a daily census, in the St. Louis urban market.
For more information, contact Big Brothers Big Sisters at (314) 361-5900.
