The Big Brother and Big Sisters of Fredericton and Oromocto are putting out a call for volunteers, as they face a growing waitlist of kids.
Board president Anita Legere says they’ve been short on volunteers for most of the last three years.
“During COVID everything kind of died down a bit,” she said. “We now have a waitlist of 25 kids and it’s growing every day, so we’re desperately looking for men and women over the age of 18 to volunteer.”
Big Brothers and Big Sisters (BBBS) takes kids from single parent homes and matches them with a mentor, usually spending about three hours together a week. The organization runs a variety of programs, but the core of each is the same — spending time with children who need it.
On top of the main program, the organization also runs an in-school mentoring program, where the ‘big’ goes into the ‘little’s’ school for about an hour each week. Legere said that the program is popular with university students in particular.
There are also group programs that run over a seven to 10-week period, for about an hour or two a week.
With about 5,000 single parent homes in the Fredericton and Oromocto area, Legere said the need for the program is great.
Legere first got involved with BBBS when she moved to Fredericton from Moncton for work 35 years ago. Missing the time she had spent with her nieces and nephews, Leger signed up to be a big sister and was paired with 10 year-old Rhea Bowen.
That meeting sparked a bond that has lasted over the last three and a half decades, as the pair bonded over a shared love of ice cream, board games and baking.
“She’s been with me for pretty much every difficult moment in my life and also pretty much every positive moment,” Bowen said. “It’s quite empowering when you know that person is always going to stand beside you no matter what’s happening in your life and a lot of children don’t have that.”
Bowen has also volunteered and been board member since aging out of the program. She says it provides kids with much needed validation and an additional adult presence outside of the family environment.
“The word I would use to describe it, I used to say life-changing, but I’ve moved it to this idea of, for a child it’s life affirming,” she said. “It’s that somebody sees you, somebody hears you and somebody thinks you’re special.”
And according to Legere, it’s not just the children that are enriched by the experience.
“We’ve had so many bigs that tell us they don’t know who it’s helped more, the little or the big. In my case, for instance, I was alone here in Fredericton when I moved here and if it hadn’t been for Rhea, my little sister, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said.
“It made a huge difference in my life because she was such a special, special young girl.”
Bowen says the things she remembers most are the simplest times spent talking or running errands. But, she says, those moments are integral to the person that she’s become.
“I’m just so grateful that I had all of those moments over these years in order to help me be who I am today and to get where I am today and where I am as a person, because the road could have been much more darker,” she said.
Anyone interested in volunteering can sign up on the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Fredericton and Oromocto website.
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