Congress Supports Big Brothers Big Sisters - Women's Congressional Policy Institute

On April 26, the House approved, by voice vote, a resolution (H. Con. Res. 41) supporting the mission and goals of Big Brothers Big Sisters. The Senate approved the resolution by unanimous consent on April 28.

Sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the resolution contains a number of findings, including:

The year 2004 marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of Big Brothers Big Sisters;
Big Brothers Big Sisters is the oldest youth mentoring organization in the nation, serving over 220,000 children in 2004 and approximately 2 million children since its founding;
Big Brothers and Big Sisters have given countless hours and forever changed the lives of America’s children, contributing over 10.5 million volunteer hours at an estimated value of $190 million in 2004; and
Evidence-based research has shown that the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring model improves a child’s academic performance and relationships with teachers, parents, and peers; decreases the likelihood of youth violence and drug and alcohol use; and raises self-confidence levels.

Stressing the importance of mentoring, Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) stated, “It is a very difficult time to be a young person in our Nation. We have a great deal of family instability. Roughly 50 percent of our children today are growing up without biological parents, so they have suffered some serious dysfunction in their lives. Roughly 22 million young people today are fatherless, and of course they are moving into a world in which a drug and alcohol culture and violence [are] quite prevalent.” He argued that mentoring “is about the best thing we have going” and “is very cost effective,” adding, “It costs about $30,000 a year to lock somebody up, and yet most mentoring programs, some of the very best ones, cost maybe $400 to $500 per mentee per year.”

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) cited his personal experience as a mentor: “I had the good fortune to serve as a Big Brother to a little brother of mine, who then went on to become a staff person and work for the Mayor, Sharon Pratt, of Washington, D.C., and then went on to work for Vice President Al Gore, eventually becoming, and he is now, the minister and pastor of a church in Maryland. So I know that the Big Brothers program is a good program; that it does work, because Reverend Courtney Miller is a prime example of that. And I certainly wish Courtney well as we wish the continuation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.”