Big Brothers Big Sisters Institutionalizes Amachi

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) has contributed significantly to the success of Amachi since its inception in September 2000. During the last four years BBBSA’s role has grown from making and maintaining matches in Philadelphia to completely administering Amachi programs nationwide.

Amachi is “not a special program,” said Judy Vredenburgh, president and CEO of BBBSA. “It’s a part of our business, and it will have an impact on the way we do our business. We’re absolutely in this for the long haul.”

Expansion of the Amachi program is a key component of BBBSA’s strategic plan, which includes increasing diversity within its volunteer base and mentoring a larger population of children in need. The strategic plan “forces us to go find the children in need, especially those who we know can absolutely benefit. If we’re going to serve a lot more children, we need to reach out to communities of natural volunteers that are connected to the neighborhoods and the schools in which the children live and study,” said Vredenburgh. “We need the mentors to mirror the kids in our country, and in order to go to scale we need to do that in partnerships, partnerships with African American churches, partnerships with different Hispanic community groups [and] partnerships with, of course, the Caucasian community as well.”

In August 2004, BBBSA hired Rev. Mark Scott, director of mentoring partnerships, to help assist it and local agencies across the country develop alliances with other organizations. “We are thrilled that Rev. Mark Scott has joined our organization full time,” said Vredenburgh. “He is just a tremendously talented and dedicated executive. He’s working hands on to help us in specific situations on how to best partner.”

Scott said he was specifically attracted to the BBBSA position because of the chance to work with Amachi. “Amachi allows the opportunity to work with a group of people that can get something done,” said Scott. “Work with Amachi has not been easy, but people didn’t quit. I’m impressed by their perseverance.”

BBBSA has persevered with Amachi from the beginning. After the success of the Philadelphia model, in January 2003 Rev. W. Wilson Goode Sr. attended the BBBSA Large Agency Conference in Denver, where he spoke passionately about the Amachi program. This passion was felt by many of the agencies in attendance, which subsequently applied for funding from BBBSA to start Amachi programs in their areas. BBBSA allocated $1 million across 11 additional large agencies outside of Philadelphia.

In addition, it followed up on the interest in Amachi from the White House. President Bush visited the Amachi Philadelphia program in July 2001 and December 2002. In August 2003 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded approximately $10 million to programs for mentoring children of prisoners (MCOP) . Local BBBSA agencies received approximately 26 percent of this funding. The following year HHS increased funding to approximately $50 million, of which local BBBSA agencies received about 30 percent. “We really worked hard from an advocacy point of view to get the big increase from the federal government’s commitment to mentoring children of prisoners,” said Vredenburgh.

There are currently 122 BBBSA agencies involved in MCOP programs nationwide, either as the exclusive administrator or in collaboration with other organizations. In November 2004 BBBSA held a MCOP conference for these agencies. Representatives from the Amachi Training Institute, Corporation for National and Community Service, Prison Fellowship Ministries, Child Welfare League of America, as well as other partnering organizations, attended the conference and provided guidance on how to construct an effective program. Although not all of the BBBSA agencies specifically follow the Amachi model of recruiting solely from congregations, according to Scott, Amachi has influenced them all.

“The spirit of the [MCOP] program, regardless of where you are, is that there are a community of people that are disproportionately represented in the prison system and there are children that are impacted by that,” said Scott. “You want to find those children and people in the community where they come from to become the volunteers to mentor them—that’s the spirit of Amachi.”

Winter 2004