The decision to suspend the School Buddies program was made by the board of the nonprofit when the total budget was reduced from $425,000 to $250,000, according to Colleen Haggerty, chief operations officer, who cited a decline in donations and grants as the reason for the reduced budget.
“Our revenue stream wasn’t keeping up with the program,” Haggerty said of the 10-year-old mentoring program, which matched adult volunteers to public school children who could benefit from additional adult interaction and guidance. The adult mentor spent one hour per week with the child either during or after school for a minimum of one school year, according to Haggerty.
“It wasn’t about tutoring the child. The focus was on the relationship,” Haggerty said. “Even one hour makes a difference.”
Children were referred to the program by teachers or other staff members, and Happy Valley Elementary School usually had between 12 and 24 students enrolled out of its approximate total of 290 students, according to Principal Karen Tolliver.
“Our students benefited from having a positive role model and someone who spent time with them on a regular basis,” Tolliver said, “the school buddy was someone they could have a relationship with, [someone] they could talk to and have fun [with].”
Tolliver said Happy Valley students miss their mentors, and some matches had been together for several years.
“They had formed a strong bond over time and this has been a loss for students who have often already experienced loss in their lives,” Tolliver said.
There is a buddy system within the elementary school, involving lower grade level classes paired with higher grade level classes to improve reading comprehension, but Tolliver said School Buddies filled a different need.
“A school buddy was someone that was older and had the maturity to relate to students on another level,” Tolliver said.
Laurel Kunesh, now match support specialist for community mentoring programs, was the School Buddies coordinator for Happy Valley Elementary School. She worked closely with teachers who referred students to the School Buddies program.
“A [Happy Valley Elementary School] teacher shared with me that the children came back to the classroom [after a mentoring session] with their emotional tanks filled up,” Kunesh said.
Big Brothers Big Sisters is now focusing on community-based mentoring as well as its new Mother-2-Mother program, involving experienced mothers mentoring teenage mothers. Haggerty would like to see the School Buddies program return, but she says there is no rush.
“The wisest and most prudent way of using our donor dollars would be to set up a strategic plan and be able to sustain the [School Buddies] program,” Haggerty said, “and we’re not at that place right now.”
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