Big Brothers, Big Sisters reflect on busy 2018

Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Northeast Ohio are still vacuuming the confetti from the floors after celebrating their biggest event of the year — the 17th annual Festival of Trees.

Their largest fundraiser of the year saw over 400 people attend with an estimated $100,000 in contributions from residents, members of the business community, and local government officials.

“It’s what keeps us going,” said Community Outreach Coordinator Shannon Majewski. “It’s

what helps us continue to do the work we do in Lake, Geauga, and Ashtabula counties.”

The work Majewski mentions includes serving roughly 500 boys and girls a year, pairing them with supportive older surrogate Brothers and Sisters to offer confidence, compassion, and the attention adolescents need throughout such critically formative times in their lives.

The ways in which both Big Brothers and Big Sisters can offer this support has widely expanded since the organization’s inception. The two traditional programs, communitybased and afterschool, still remain but are now bolstered by others that speak to the changing demands

of the children they serve.

“The one thing about BB/BS is that we are always changing with the times in order to meet the needs of the community,” Majewski said.

These changes include the ECITY program (Entrepreneurship: Connecting, Inspiring and Teaching Youth) which is conducted with Harvey High School and the school’s business teacher, Nell Rapport.

“We bring adult volunteers in and help them work with students in the classroom,” Majewski said. “They work on a project together from January to April.”

Together the pair create a product that they can market and sell as a means to introduce the student to the world of commerce, marketing and manufacturing.

The organization has also begun running a foster

care program in the past 1 ½ years. Majewski said between Lake and Geauga counties, they work with the two local homes — Caley Home, which is a true foster facility, and the Geauga Youth Center, which is a residential facility with the hopes that reunification with the families will happen.

“We bring volunteers in there every other week to each location,” she said. “They come in for a couple hours on Saturday and spend time with the children for team building skills, life skills, all the different things that the kids don’t get.

“So many of the kids are used to a paid professional staff. They don’t have friends or family members or anyone that is there to care for them.”

The interactions at both the Caley Home and the Geauga Youth Center are

group orientated but Majewski points out that “the hope is that if you came in to volunteer and started gravitating towards ‘Jimmy’ that a match may come out of that and we would start working oneon-one instead of the group settings.”

Paramount to all of these programs are the volunteers.

“It’s been a growth year,” Majewski said. “We’ve definitely increased our volunteers by a pretty large margin, but we always need to increase that. Without our volunteers we can’t do what we do. It’s literally what we run on.”

Even with the uptick in volunteers there is a still an extensive waiting list for young boys seeking their own Big Brothers.

“We are always in need of male volunteers,” she said.

Majewski doesn’t speak

to the importance of volunteering solely from an administrative level.

“I’ve been a Big Sister myself for the past nine years,” she said. “My Little Sister was 8 when I was matched with her and now she’s out of high school. She graduated last year and is onto college and bigger and better things.

“My Little Sister has changed my life in more ways than I could have ever imagined.”

With December right around the corner, BB/BS is gearing up for a large Christmas party for all of their programs.

“We bring the kids in and have Santa come by and hang out,” Majewski said. “It’s a big gathering, actually.”

Additionally, members of the community and local businesses have also stepped in to adopt families.

“When a company wants to adopt a family we look to see the needs of that family, specifically, if they’re not going to have gifts and things like that,” Majewski said. “Some will purchase food, others will do Christmas presents.”

As successful as 2018 was with its upswing in volunteers and the continued expansion of BB/ BS programs and services, Majewski has no intention of settling.

“It’s definitely been a growth year for us, but we’d love for 2019 to be even better,” she said. “I can’t say more about it quite yet, but 2019 will bring new changes for (BB/BS), exciting, positive changes.”

Those interested in being a Big Brother or Big Sister can visit www. bbbsneo.org or call 440352-2526.