Benefits to the community:

• Community members are provided with the opportunity to work directly and collaboratively in support of healthy and successful children.
• Community understanding and tolerance is enhanced, as individual volunteers gain a more sophisticated understanding of challenges faced by familes and children “at risk”.  These challenges often exceed the academic challenges that can be addressed by schools in addressing these broader needs.
• Community social responsibility is enhanced through the engagement of individual private citizens and corporate citizens as volunteers or mentors.  Through mentorship roles, citizens see the tangible impact of  their enhanced responsibility
• Prince George RCMP statistics tell us that 702 youth have had contact with the RCMP from November 2005 – November 2006.  In order to work proactively with these youth before they encounter the law we need to expand mentoring programs. 

A study of five school-based mentoring programs conducted in 2002 by Big Brothers Big Sisters of America found that:

• 64% of the children developed a more positive attitude towards school
• 58% achieved a higher grade in social studies, languages and math
• 60% improved their relationship with adults
• 56% improved their relationship with peers
• 55% of the children were found to be better able to express their feelings
• 64% developed higher levels of self-confidence

In 2005, almost 3000 children living in British Columbia were partnered with a mentor in one of the many Big Brothers Big Sisters programs.  The government of British Columbia is supportive of the work that our organization does because it is proven that mentoring works.  Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada did studies on the effects of children who have a positive mentor in their lives.  They found that:

• These children  are less likely to lose their tempers when they get angry
• These children are less often sad, fearful, angry, frustrated and anxious
• 64% develop  a more positive attitude towards school
• 46% are less likely to initiate drug and alcohol use
• 78% of “littles” who came from a social assistance background no longer rely on this form of income

In March of 2008 a forth year Psychology student and In-School Mentor Carmen Poirer conducted a study with some of our matches.  Click here to read their findings.