Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome me. It's time to bring in big brothers, big sisters and Charlene do how do you do? Well?
It's a lovely fall morning it is.
And you brought along Rusty got here for good luck.
Yeah, just ride your coattails.
Well you no stranger, you've been here quite a few times. First of all, the big event, how.
Do we do big event? Our dinner and auction was wonderful.
It was.
It really was everything from decorations to the Danny Hood who shared his match story to Anjeanette and the evolution for the entertainment, and of course Roger did his usual great auctioneer work, the crowd and our MC John J. Kine and our and our event Barbara and John B.
King. So it was it really was the perfect.
Finale to my last gala. As you know, I am retiring in November.
It's only twenty six, I tell her, That's what I tell her.
So everything just ran really smoothly and we raised over seventy.
Thousand dollars, which is over goals, so that's awesome. So it really.
Was a good evening and we are I want to thank our sponsor Sutterfield was the presenting sponsor, and then Conical Philips Philliped sixty six and Rusty Tear sponsors.
We are going to be talking a little bit today about the recruitment of mentors, and you, Rusty, you might have a little insight track on this. Yeah.
Yeah, so'm I say.
I'm honored to get the privilege to serve on the board at Big Brother, Big Sister here in Barsville. Have been doing it for quite a few years now. That really started though, when I became a mentor. I'll never forget that first month I joined as a big and then a month later Charlene said, hey, you're going to join the board too, so it was kind of a I didn't realize it was a package deal.
Yeah.
We're always looking for mentors, and you know, I really stress the importance of male mentors. We really need men to step up in the community. We have a lot a lot of young boys out there waiting. And Dayton and I have been together for three years. And the irony is I was taller when we first met. Now he is taller than me. So the joke is I'm
the little brother. But I get just as much out of it as he probably does, and that's something I didn't realize at the beginning, and just the amount of you know, everything you pour in is what you're going to get out right, And that's come back to me tenfold. And so you can just spend a couple hours every other week. I think we all have the time to
do that. We're all busy though there's sports, there's activities, But I think we can take a couple hours every other week spend it given back to the community because we have a fair amount of young kids in waiting that really need mentors.
How many kids do we have in waiting, Charlie, We.
Have thirty two children on the waiting list. Twelve of them are girls and twenty of them are boys. More boys are referred more women volunteers, so there's always that disparity going going on. But yes, and our greatest need ist men or couples to be matched with the boys.
Exactly.
Very cool that you have married couples who might be empty nesters now and it benefits to everybody.
It does.
A big couple, their screens separately come in and they're matched with a boy. Advantage to the couple as they can do stuff together to get back to the community and they advantage to the child is that they get both a male role model and a female role model, and a healthy marriage role model as well. So it is an advantage and it's particularly useful for either young couples with no children or the empty nesters retirees.
This gives a child a chance to see maybe something and probably something they don't see in their everyday life. Correct.
Great, Yeah, and you know I kind of add to that. Sometimes I think mentors may think, hey, I need to be a parent figure and really know you're that's the fun part of this.
I get to be. I joke.
I have four siblings and I'm the oldest, and if you're ask any of them, they would probably say I was probably hard on them, And so I joke with them, Hey, to to Dayton, I'm the brother.
I always wanted to.
Be that kind of that older brother feeling. Yeah. But yeah, you get a chance to do something price start a new both of you. Yeah, and you bring out the best possible each other.
That's right, And I mean it's it's a humbling experience. I've learned. I can't fly kites throughout.
This this, but a bitch, you look fun trying, yes, and I hand it to him and he all of a sudden can fly it. I don't understand, but yeah, we've done all and there's so many things to do in our community that we probably don't think about. Whether that's just bowling, going to Remy's going to to the park, like I said, flying kites, we've done, fishing, you name it. We've done all the things here and most of it it's pretty costa fault.
Well, yeah, right there, all those things you mentioned you weren't like taking out a home loan to go to an amusement park or something like that. I know how that goes. I got seven kids, I've done that. But yeah, these are just everyday things. And it's the bonding. It's the time.
It is.
It's basically the time and conversation.
It really is.
And we've had all kinds of really deep conversations I probably wasn't planned for. And I've reached out to Daniel at Big Brother Bick sister kind of helps coordinate everything there and setting up the matches, just to get feedback in a different perspective. But it's been a great experience and I look forward to continue to get until he graduates, high school and then beyond.
Wow, this is great. I understand we have some site based programs going on in some of our elementary school right.
Our site based are school base are used interchangeably. The volunteers can be young as young as fifteen and a half and they the volunteers stay at the child's school and they meet during the after school program hours from three thirty to four thirty.
So those it's an ideal.
Opportunity for high school students, college students, retirees because we go to the school the same day every week and meet during that hour. We provide activity boxes with all kinds of things to do in them, but you have to stay on the school campus. And our target schools for this here are Jane Phillips Elementary, Wilson Elementary, and then Dewey Elementary.
Ah, there you go.
Cool.
So if there are you know your listeners are thinking, well, I have a child in one of those three schools that I would like to have a big brother or big sister, either in our community based program or a site based program, and just talk to the school counselor or they can call our office and if there's anyone listening that has a high school student sixteen and up that is interested in having a volunteer opportunity, then we
would welcome that. We definitely need volunteers at especially at Jane Phillips and we have six boys they're all waiting in a site based program, so they can just give our office.
Call very good, very good, Big Brothers, Big Sisters. You you've still kind of got the glow of the big award, haven't you.
Yes, well, everybody, yes, that was a big deal.
It was a huge deal.
No play onwards intended.
The Big Brothers Sisters of Oklahoma is named the twenty twenty three Large Agency Alliance Agency.
Of the Year.
Yes, and that is.
It is a recognition based on specific criteria financial stability, growth, quality of matches.
So it's.
It's well earned and a big national recognition of the quality of the program of Big of the Oklahoma program.
That's great. This is not your participation rippon, this is this is this is the one that goes on the mantel. Yes, we'll congratulations again. She's so humble.
She's like, oh yeah, well when we leave here, she'll be am a little more private.
Right now, she just going that way.
You know, well, I've been I've been the director here.
Big Brothers for Sisters has been serving Washington County for forty years and I've been the director for thirty five of those years. And so, you know, quality of program and has always been my priority in terms of what we're doing, try to do it at the highest level standard of excellence as possible, and so it's just nice to see that that is recognized at the national level as well.
Oh there you go about darn time too. I mean, I would just be saying now, getting back to recruitment of mentors, how difficult is this?
Ar Well, recruiting is difficult, and it's changed over the years, and you know, people's perspective on mentoring has changed. Our demographics in our community has changed significantly. You know, people have less time, it appears because of the workloads and things, but the reality is we all have the same twenty four hours and it's really about what you choose to
spend your time on. And like Rusty said, you know, we all have a couple hours a week that we could involve a child in something that we're already doing if we just think about it, you know, one less TV show.
Or two maybe I told myself, could I give up a round a golf every couple of weeks. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty easy. Yeah, it's not like my golf games good anyways. So my time can be keeper appreciate, it could be spent in other other areas more productive.
But it really does.
It takes a little to be a big, it does. It does take a little to be a big.
Do you think people who are thinking about this kind of make more of it?
Absolutely? Yeah? And and right it is.
It's always a little awkward, you know, that first couple of meetings because you're you're still connecting, You're trying to figure out you know what that's exactly right, And it's a different adult adult your adult to kid, right, and so.
But it's it's it's funny. It just starts clicking.
And I I had asked myself when I'm making a difference, and am I you know, am I making a positive difference in this young man's life? And I'll never forget. I went to I dropped him off one day, maybe a month or two into this, and his mom said, Hey, I just want you to know. I can always tell after he's hung out with you because he sings in the shower. He's so upbeat he whistles around the house.
And so she just thanked me, which I in turn just thank her because again it's it's helped me just as much as much him well.
And we.
Take the matches are made on the basis of personality, common interests, what the child's needs are, and what the volunteer's life experience are. So if you think about it, that's how you have friends. You have you get along, you have something in common, and one of you is
not too needy for the others. So that's so we take a lot of effort in the enrollment process and doing the interviews, understanding what the child and family's needs are, Understanding the volunteer, what are they bringing to.
The table, what's their picture of.
Being a mentor, and then matching that volunteer with the right child off.
The waiting list very good.
So that helps to get off to a strong start. And Daniel is our program specialist, and we do provide the professional support, and that's what separates us from a lot of other programs where it's like you tossed together and left on your own devices. Our program specialist talks to the volunteer the parent and the child once a month for the first year.
And Big Brothers Big Sisters also partners with other agencies here in town for mentorship. Correct.
Yes, we do all of the mentoring component of Young Scholars. They recruit the volunteers, but once the volunteer is recruited, we provide the mentoring component of that program.
Very good, folks, well worth your time, well worth your investment of your time, and well worth your investment period. If people want to know more about Big Brothers Big Sisters, how do we do that here locally?
The website is big Oklahoma dot org, or they can call our office nine one eight two one three four five two four is my is my number?
Okay, And once again, congratulations on the big event, the big success there, and on the big award.
Thank you.
That's mighty big stuff.
Yeah, and a big retirement.
I'm going to ask you I had to answer this, what kind of fun you plan it? Well?
Right now I'm just running to get all my stuff tidied up so and hand it off perfectly to the next person.
I can't focus too much on that.
It's happening after November fifteenth, but my first six months is going to be a well deserved rest and just thinking about how I want to how I want to plan and do the next chapter of my life.
Have you thought about being a big mentor?
I have, I bet she has. I bet she can too.
Well. I've been a big sister three times in my life, okay, and probably will again.
But you know, we'll we'll just see how that works, all right.
I want to thank you both for being in here with us today and is sharing with us about big brothers and big sisters.
Thank you, Thank you so much.
Folks you have been watching and listening to our community connection