his is part of a year-long ‘Love for Local’ series called NB365: portraits of New Brunswick entrepreneurs, businesses, and organizations. Huddle is a media partner with Love for Local. Today we feature Michèle Nadeau, Joline Cyr, Allyson Caldwell, and Jessica Munn of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Moncton.

AT BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREATER MONCTON, OUR MISSION IS TO ENABLE LIFE-CHANGING MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS TO IGNITE THE POWER AND POTENTIAL OF YOUNG PEOPLE.

These important developmental relationships give young people access to new opportunities and experiences to build their confidence and expand their idea of what is possible.

We offer a variety of no-cost community programs for youth who can benefit from an additional, consistent relationship with an adult.

Our mentoring programs are grounded in an evidence-based relationship-building framework called the Developmental Relationships Framework. These relationships are close connections through which young people discover who they are, cultivate abilities to shape their own lives, and learn how to engage with and contribute to the world around them.

We have adopted this framework to train, evaluate, and support mentors while they build and sustain personalized, intentional, and critical relationships with youth by Expressing Care, Challenging Growth, Providing Support, Sharing Power and Expanding Possibilities.

We’ve been leading the way in mentoring programs for youth in our community since 1973. However, our story actually begins more than a century ago, on December 3, 1904, in Lower Manhattan. A boy’s life hung in the balance, the weight of an 18-month reformatory sentence about to crush his future.

Then, Ernest Coulter, clerk of the Court of Special Sessions of the City of New York, made his famous plea.

“There is only one possible way to save that youngster, and that is to have some earnest, true man volunteer to be his big brother. To look after him, to help him do right, to make the little chap feel that there is at least one human being in this great city who takes a personal interest in him, who cares whether he lives or dies. I call for a volunteer,” he said.

Today, young people in our programs are still facing daily adversities and barriers to their success. We intervene with a caring adult who creates a buffer between the child and their adversities, promoting resiliency and positive youth development.

Mentoring helps ensure that adversities faced in childhood do not define a young person’s adulthood.

Regardless of the ever-changing reality, we protected, nourished and ignited important developmental relationships for youth, thanks to the ongoing generosity of our funders, our partners, our volunteers, and our community.