Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County Celebrates 60 Years of Service: Human Companionship
Sandy Morales has been the executive director and successfully saw the in-person program to the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic.
by Jonathan Gramling
Positive human companionship. What a simple concept. But something so impossible, it seems, in real life, especially for some who have been on the wrong side of human experience.
Back in 1966, 60 years ago, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County was established to even the scale of human experience, to bring another perspective and positive interaction to children who have been on the short end of positive guidance and interaction through no fault of their own. It’s just a situation they have found themselves as they grow up. And they have succeeded in being that positive force in children’s lives ever since.
Thirteen years ago, Sandy Morales became the third executive director, following in Dan Gribbon’s and Dora Zuñiga’s footsteps.
“it’s incredible that I have been here 13 years,” Morales said. “I remember when I first became the CEO, brand new. We were just about ready to celebrate our 50th anniversary. And so here we are on 60 years. And it’s been incredible just to see the appreciation for the mission, the work that we do. The mission is still very relevant today just as it was when I first started and just as it was back in 1966 when the program started here in Dane County. And so, I’m just incredibly honored to be part of the history. And to have witnessed just the amount of volunteers who have stepped up to invest in a child’s life.”
Morales faced a major challenge to the agency’s existence that her predecessors ever faced: the COVID-19 pandemic. As a naturally in-person program, the pandemic was a threat to its very existence.
“We have an in-person mission that actually survived a pandemic that required everybody to stay home and not have any contact with each other,” Morales said. “We had to pivot. That’s the word that we used so much back in 2020. We focused on checking in with our families. We started delivering food just like many others, making sure our families had food. And we also gave guidelines on how to meet virtually. We started doing art kits and meal kits so that Bigs and Littles could meet virtually and do things together online.”
And BBBS also had to be careful as the agency bringing people together with an inherent responsibility to keep everyone safe.
“I think once we knew a little bit more about Bigs and Littles being able to meet, we had to establish guidelines on what that meant and how they could meet and how far they needed to stay away from each other,” Morales said. “Did it mean riding in a vehicle? There was just a lot of infrastructure that we had to put together in order to continue delivering on our mission and still trying to maintain that connection between our Bigs and Littles. In our school program where we match volunteers from the community with students who are at school, we closed all of our school programs. And when we tried to restart it virtually, we were able to do it with a small number of kids. But we did it. We matched volunteers who met with students online, brand new online. And we were able to maintain a relationship through the academic year.”
And the impact of the pandemic did not end when the vaccination for COVID-19 became readily available. It had a lingering impact for years to come.
“We’ve been rebuilding our program ever since the pandemic,” Morales admitted. “So many relationships were severed or didn’t even get a chance to ignite. We are happy we were able to survive that. We had to slowly get volunteers to even consider us once again as a place to volunteer because everyone was so concerned about COVID and health concerns. Having to reestablish ourselves as, ‘Hey, this is part of being a human being, volunteering and meeting with people.’ We were an organization that was ready to go as soon as we knew it was safe. We were the first people to say, ‘Okay, how can we do this in a safe way?’ We also had to make sure that people who were thinking about volunteering, but weren’t quite ready yet again trying to make sure we were at the forefront and making sure that we were communicating the need.”
Currently, BBBS serves about 550 young people per year. But they have a waiting list of about 10 young people. And so they are trying to be innovative — beyond recruiting more Bigs — to meet the needs of the young people.
One is their School Friends Program.
“We also have seven school sites in the Madison area where we are recruiting volunteers for as well,”: Morales said. “That’s what we need right now. We need about 50 volunteers for School Friends, our school mentoring program. We want to get those programs started right away. The school year has started, so we are looking for about 10 volunteers per school. That would be incredible to be able to serve those students. It’s elementary schools plus a middle school.”
And in order to meet the gap. BBBS is also recruiting older high school students to serve as mentors for elementary school students.
“A brand new program we have is our High School Leadership Program,” Morales said. “We are able to recruit Bigs from West High School and East High School. The West High students travel to Randall Elementary during the lunch hour to mentor kids. And East High students go to Emerson Elementary and they mentor students there. I think that is one of the changes we made after the pandemic. We decreased the age of being a community-based volunteer to 18-years-old. It used to be 21. And we have also now invited high school students who are under 18-years-old, but are specifically West and East High students to participate in school-based mentoring.”
To become a Big — BBBS’ term for its mentors — it’s rather simple. One has to have the time in their life to be able to regularly be in a Little’s life and have a commitment to be there. Nothing is more destructive to the Little’s self-concept than for a Big to be a regular ‘no-show.’
“We look for someone who is going to show up to be a Big. It’s really that simple. To be a Big, they need to say, ‘Yes, I’m going to show up.’ In School Friends, you show up every week during the school year for an hour. And in the community-based program, also you show up at least a couple of times per month and spend time with the young person.”
But you need to have a background that shows that you have the right character to be a Big.
“Obviously there are always risks involved in our work because we are talking about children and matching them with adults,” Morales said. “At the end of the day, these are people who don’t know each other when they meet. And while we put out these great stories, behind the scenes, we are very intentional about child safety, keeping our kids safe and making sure that we are matching them with safe volunteers. That’s why when we are asked what it takes to be a volunteer, it takes commitment. You want to show up. You want to do this. That is the first filter. But obviously we do our due diligence about making sure that we are matching kids with adults who are safe. And the parents of the Littles whom we serve appreciate and value that. That is the promise that we make to them. We will do everything in our power to make sure that we are vetting volunteers and matching their kids with volunteers who actually want to invest in them and also keep them safe.”
And to be a Big, it doesn’t mean you are coming out-of-pocket for everything you do with the little.
“You don’t have to have deep pockets at all to be a Big,” Morales emphasized. “We have recently graduated college students. We have people who are new to the workforce. They are not able to afford some of these experiences. And so we try to really offset that by partnering with other organizations so that we can bring these experiences to them for very low cost, if not for free. And as we know, Badger sport season is upon us. And we receive a lot of tickets to Badger sporting events that we give out for free to our matches. There are other organizations that have provided tickets for different entertainment events that are also free for our matches. We provide those events or partnerships with other organizations at very low cost if no cost at all.” While it always isn’t like this, Morales spoke about a recent Big-Little outing to Road America.
“We got a behind-the-scenes tour of Road America,” Morales said. “And Erica Hoffman who is a woman and race car driver spent the day with us. She talked about her role as a race car driver. She showed us her car. And we also got to meet the race director in the traffic control area. We got tgo tour that and the media center too. This was all sponsored by TruStage and their CEO Terrance Williams who is a board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. He’s a former Big and just an incredible supporter of our agency. Those are just the kinds of opportunities we can provide. Out Littles don’t get to experience on an ordinary day something like Road America. I hadn’t done anything like that before. This was a brand new experience for our Littles. We have Littles who were interested in mechanics who attended. We had a Little who was interested in being a pilot. This was a great way to look at something else that is a mode of transportation. We had a Little who was really interested in photography. They got to see the camera crews and all of the media that was there. So I think everyone who was there had a connection to this event. And there was a reason why they were there. And that’s the great benefit of having a Big. That Big gets to know the Little to a point where they are like, ‘They would really like that. They would really like this experience.’ So we really appreciate our Bigs for getting to know our Littles and really advocating for them. They are the social capital that our Littles need. And our Bigs can open that door to so many opportunities. They can leverage from what we have to offer and what they have to offer on their own just based on their own networks.”
Being a Big can make a huge difference in a child’s life not to speak of their children and their children’s children. All it takes is a commitment to our future.
Visit our website at https://www.bbbsmadison.org to learn more about BBBS Dane County or give then a call at 608-661-5437.