Texas Launches First Statewide Amachi Program

On March 9, 2006, Texas made history as Governor Rick Perry announced the kickoff of the first statewide Amachi program—a collaboration of the 11 Big Brothers Big Sisters organizations in the state as well as the governor’s office, One Star Foundation, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It is hoped that Amachi Texas will become a blueprint for other states to use in replicating the statewide program.

“We’re going to have materials that states can use to then implement in their own states, provided they have the [funding],” says Olivia Eudaly, statewide executive director of Amachi Texas. “However they go about getting the [funding], we’ll have the rest of the mechanisms in place for them to be able to replicate it in their own state.”

In May 2003 Eudaly joined Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Texas as its executive vice president, four months after the North Texas BBBS agencies merged under a single 501(c)(3). “In that position I began to see the strength of Amachi not only from the standpoint of what it can do for the children and our culture, but particularly really being able to communicate the impact that Big Brothers Big Sisters makes,” says Eudaly. From then on BBBS incorporated the Amachi story into all of their processes, including fundraising and volunteer recruitment.

“As we told the story over and over we realized this is where people’s hearts really warmed and they wanted to make a difference—and they wanted to do it in a significant way.Most people, especially in Texas, are really aware of the intergenerational cycle of crime and incarceration and see it as a hopeless situation. The Amachi story brought a lot of hope,” she adds.

In summer 2005 BBBS began to pursue the statewide Amachi concept, an idea that became reality relatively quickly thanks to the interest of many Texas government officials. For instance, the chair of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, who is an appointee of the governor, sits on the BBBS of North Texas board. “As the governor began to see the phenomenon that Amachi is, then all of these various elements came into place,” says Eudaly.

With all 11 BBBS agencies on board to provide training for mentors across the state, the next step was to set up a system to recruit volunteers and find the children of incarcerated parents. “We are currently creating mechanisms for all statewide entities that are willing to collaborate with us for feeding volunteers into this program,” says Eudaly. “For instance, at the national level Methodist Men is one of the collaborators for volunteers.”

The coalition is also working at the statewide level to identify children as participants. BBBS agencies across the state are working with prison wardens to identify inmates with children. “The partnership with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, coordination with the wardens and access to all the prisons is huge,” says Eudaly. “In addition, we are in the process of creating a model that is streamlined for all the schools so that if the school counselor or teacher knows of a child that has an incarcerated parent, we have a process that goes straight through to the right source for the child to get instantly enrolled in the program.”

The partnership hopes to have a refined and well-tested process for statewide recruitment of volunteers and children in place by August 2007. “Once we create those mechanisms for all of these various components basically we’re going to have a toolkit that anybody can use,” says Eudaly.

Summer 2006