Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas has a new and innovative workplace mentoring program that many San Antonio companies have joined. It works like this: students are transported once a month to the workplace of their mentors (as a group) during lunchtime; the meetings include activities and lunch is provided. This one to one, face to face developmental mentoring program administered by Big Brothers Big Sisters is designed to provide students with workplace exposure, career awareness, college prep and assistance in preparing a post high school plan. The relationships and workplace exposure offered in the program have proven to not only improve youth attendance, grades and behaviors, but data collected from school counselors show mentored students have better standardized test scores from the previous year.
Currently there are 40 San Antonio companies participating in the Big Brothers Big Sisters workplace mentoring program, including Rackspace, Spurs Sports and Entertainment, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Southwest Research and Lake|Flato Architects.
As Rick Pych from the San Antonio Spurs Sports & Entertainment puts it:
“I really didn’t know what to expect with this program. I’m thinking, ok Thomas and his friends are going to come over here and we’re just going to sit around and talk and have lunch, but I was just completely overwhelmed and surprised about their interest in what we do every day.”
“Everybody’s first instinct is ‘I’m so busy, I have so many things, going on how am I going fit this in?’ But with the workplace mentoring program, Big Brothers Big Sisters make it so easy for the employer”
If you would like to add your company to the growing list of workplace mentoring partners with Big Brothers Big Sisters, please contact Clare McCoy at (210) 225-6322.