The overarching goal of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Lorain County (BBBSLC) for the past 30 years has been to help children and youth facing adversity achieve measurable outcomes leading to lifelong success. Founded in 1994 by Leadership Lorain County, BBBSLC is an affiliate of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), which has developed a highly effective approach to mentoring, with formalized standards and required procedures for affiliates.  This has led to the model’s recognition as an evidence-based program. 

Our community and school/site-based programs use evidence-based practices to achieve measurable outcomes in the areas of educational success, improved attitudes and competencies, and risky behavior avoidance. We achieve this by working with community partners and engaging with families, volunteers, and donors to maintain, adapt, and expand our programs and activities that make professionally supported, meaningful, monitored one-on-one mentoring matches between adult volunteers (“Bigs”) and children and youth (“Littles”), ages 6 through 19 in communities across Lorain County.  Our one-on-one mentoring relationships support the critical social and emotional development needed to help build resilience and promote the mental health and well-being of the children we serve. The BBBSLC mentoring approach supports the mentee and mentor match at many points: at recruitment, orientation, pre-match training, post-match training, in-service training, and ongoing evaluation and supervision. 

BBBSLC uses extensive screening procedures including criminal background checks, personal references, employment status checks and home studies.  Mentors are trained by BBBSLC staff in: protective and risk factors, child safety, recognizing child abuse, youth development, communications, limit-setting, relationship-building, and specialized areas like social and emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, opioid impacts and preventions and more.  

BBBSLC is a certified prevention service provider by the Ohio Mental Health Addiction Services Board, is a prevention service provider affiliate of the Lorain County Mental Health Addiction Services Board (MHARS), and works in partnership with the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Ohio Department of Youth Services, The Ohio Department of Education, Lorain County Jobs and Family Services, and local law enforcement agencies to prevent and reduce involvement in juvenile delinquency and substance abuse. Other mental health-related specialty area curricula and training utilized with mentoring matches include social and emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and opioid impacts and prevention. BBBSLC has two federal grants and one state grant to help address the needs of high-risk youth in the areas of opioid exposure and delinquency prevention.