Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwest Colorado

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwest Colorado creates and supports one- to-one mentoring relationships that inspire the power and promise of youth. Our vision is to help all youth in our program achieve their full potential. By partnering with parents/guardians, educators, volunteers, and others in the community, we are accountable for each youth in our program, ages 6 years+, in achieving higher graduation rates, increasing a sense of belonging and confidence, mitigate risky behaviors, and increase a desire to achieve their own success. In 2022, our professionally trained staff continued to engage 70 youth as mentors or mentees in our local community. With environmental changes and "re-openings" post-pandemic (schools, extracurricular activities), we reassessed the programs being delivered to our youth by our volunteers, based on the needs of both volunteers, youth, and the schools. This has driven us to deliver the high school bigs and community-based programs in la plata county in 2022 and matched 21 new youth with their mentors in addition to supporting existing match relationships that continue to go strong. Our agency utilized 2022 as a time of stabilizing to the society that continues to develop after school closures and the aftermath of the impact on our youth. With a 3-year strategic plan identified in 2022, closures of matches that had disconnected due to the impact of less personal contact for several years and listening to the community in how they'd like to mentor our youth, we have set ambitious and achievable goals to serve again 100 youth with quality and intentional strategies in years to come. 62% of our youth served were raised in family households without two parents and included youth in foster care, raised by grandparents, or one- parent households. 10% of our youth have at least one parent incarcerated, and 75% of our youth are eligible for free/reduced lunch. As our average age of youth served increases, our match time averaged just over 3 years. of new youth being matched with a mentor, the average age increased to over 11 years old, in comparison to previous years where the average age was under 9 years old.