Two well-known organizations recently announced that they will partner up in order to help each other out.
The Girl Scouts of the USA and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America are teaming up to provide girls greater access to mentorship opportunities and leadership experiences.
The Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Permian Basin will be part of the national pilot program with the Girl scouts.
“It is nationwide,” Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Permian Basin Executive Director Kay Crites said. “I was on a call about it the other day and we had agencies in Hawaii, Utah and across the nation. We were contacted about a month ago about this is that we would be working with Girl Scout agencies in New Mexico and part of Texas. They contact us and asked if we’d like to be a part of this and we said yes. It’s a win-win situation.”
According to a press release that came out earlier this week, the two organizations are “working together to bring their outcome-driven experiences and programs to more girls across the country. The two organizations are combining their efforts to provide access to leadership and mentoring opportunities in the areas of STEM, outdoors, life skills development and entrepreneurship.”
Crites says that what this means for the Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies is that they are going to do this a couple of different ways.
“There are different agencies that are participating,” Crites said. “Some are doing a troop-based model in where they host a troop meeting on a regular basis. … The bigs and the littles will actually become members of the Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts nation has provided funding to pay for the membership fee because a lot of our children are lower income. Through that then they will be able to access a vast range of programming and activities that they can take part of through the Girl Scouts. Our matches are always trying to find healthy things to do. They’re trying to find healthy and educational things to do. Sometimes, week after week, it’s hard to come up with something new with your little. This way, they can log in and earn badges. It’s just overwhelming the amount the girl scouts can provide for our bigs and littles.”
Crites says there are 13 agencies in the Big Brothers Big Sisters that will be taking part in it.
Crites says that the benefits are endless.
“The benefits for our program is that mentoring relationship and the opportunity to have fun while learning educational opportunities and taking part in academic opportunities and being healthier since we’ve been cooped up because of COVID,” Crites said. “We’re all anxious to get outside and do things that we haven’t been able to do so it helps and the basis of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program is that bond between the bigs and the littles where the little has someone to talk to and someone they can depend on and have an encouraging person with them. To develop that bond, they do things together and activities. This is a great asset for our current matches and incoming matches to take off that burden of trying to find something to do as well as having fun, being educational and being healthy.”
Those who are interested in the Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Permian Basin can go to bbbspermianbasin.org
