Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Pittsburgh

Our agency's primary programs include community-based, site-based, and Big futures. In all of our programs we maintain a commitment to program quality. Each match is supported by a staff member helping matches to set and maintain goals as well as track outcomes and provide encouragement and general support when necessary.a. The community-based program is the traditional mentoring model, in which bigs and littles meet for at least four hours each month in community settings. These one-to-one matches often visit restaurants and attend sporting events together and spend time at local libraries, parks, zoos, museums, and other recreational locations.b. The site-based program, takes place at the little's school during lunch time or after school. Bigs and littles in site-based programs engage in structured activities together for one hour at a specified time and place each week during the school year. During the summer, our agency organizes events and presents other opportunities for these matches to stay connected.c. Work place mentoring is a program where high school students travel to a specific corporate environment to meet with mentors bi-weekly for two hours for traditional mentoring as well as awareness of opportunities in an active work environment. The students and their mentors participate in a bbbs planned curriculum specifically designed to give exposure to the workplace and provide opportunities for career and educational goal setting.d. Be a middle school mentor - a career based mentoring program with adults from multiple professions as mentors. The matches meet weekly for a minimum of 45 minutes for activities geared toward career readiness. This was an initiative by youth futures commission, united way, Pittsburgh public schools and the mentoring partnership. The eventual goal of this program is that every 6th grader in the Pittsburgh public schools will have a mentor.e. Big futures - as part of the core academic curriculum in ninth grade, students are intentionally paired in one-to-one mentoring relationships with college-educated volunteers. The partnering school allocates one class period per week for mentees to learn and engage with the research-based program curriculum. The session is facilitated by a staff member. Once per week, the mentees compose a 3-4 paragraph email to their mentors based on a series of curriculum-based writing prompts. The mentors use a different set of prompts to compose a response. These exchanges occur over the secure and imentor interactive online platform. Once per month, the mentees and mentors meet at the school for an in-person "pair event" for an opportunity for pairs to interact, develop their relationships, and apply the curriculum to real-life scenarios. The mentees and mentors continue to work together, in-person and online, through high school graduation.