Brownwood Mentoring: Big Brothers & Big Sisters eyes Brownwood

Mentor program plans to expand
Big Brothers Big Sisters adds San Angelo, eyes Brownwood
By Brye Butler / Reporter-News Staff Writer
June 3, 2005
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Abilene is going regional.
The national nonprofit organization that locally matches roughly 700 children with adult mentors each year is setting up a program in San Angelo. It also is considering starting a program in Brownwood within the next two years.
Employees will formally announce the expansion and other changes Monday in Abilene and Tuesday in San Angelo.
Although the agency is in Abilene, San Angelo and Brownwood would each function with individual directors and boards. The branches will be overseen by a new umbrella organization called Big Brothers Big Sisters of West Central Texas.
The 26-year-old Big Brothers Big Sisters of Abilene will be known by this new name, said Janet Ardoyno, director of the Abilene branch.
Ardoyno is now the chief executive officer of BBBS of West Central Texas in addition to serving as the Abilene branch's regional director. However, the organization will hire a new Abilene regional director in late summer.
Ardoyno will remain based in Abilene.
The goal of the regional expansion is ''to serve more children and to mentor where there is nothing available at all,'' she said.
The organization is studying whether to place the program in Brownwood, where there is no nationally recognized mentor program. The study is in its early stages to determine whether enough people are willing to volunteer as mentors, and whether enough children want to participate.
Meanwhile the BBBS in San Angelo doesn't have an office yet, but will absorb 41 child-adult matches from an organization that recently shut down, said San Angelo BBBS director Jenie Keeney.
In 2003, Voyce Youth Mentoring was founded there. But it soon had problems resulting from insecure funding and a lack of name recognition, said Keeney, who was also the Voyce director.
Meanwhile, BBBS in Abilene was receiving requests for the program in San Angelo, Ardoyno said.
So, Voyce ''has dissolved to make way for Big Brothers Big Sisters to come in,'' Keeney said.
BBBS in San Angelo will wait until fall to start new matches after more funding is secured to hire at least two additional
employees, said Keeney, who is the only employee now.
The program goal in San Angelo is to match 100 children with mentors within the first year.
''If we could be half of what Abilene has done in the past couple years, we would be so happy,'' Keeney said.
No cost estimate was available for expanding BBBS to San Angelo.
Contact nonprofits/higher education writer Brye Butler at butlerb@reporternews.com or 676-6765.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_3827246,00.html