Big Brothers Big Sisters Of Sarnia Lambton

Description

As Canada’s leading child and youth mentoring charity, Big Brothers Big Sisters facilitates life-changing relationships that inspire and empower children and youth to reach their potential, both as individuals and citizens.
Big Sisters of Sarnia-Lambton has been creating friendships since 1967. We started out matching Big Sisters and Little Sisters and have grown to include a variety of different programs. The initial service that Big Brothers now provides across Lambton County began in 1966 as a support service for parents involved with the Social Service Bureau. One of the original founders of the Sarnia agency is Brother Al Verstraaten, who pursued affiliation with Big Brothers of Canada after realizing that in many ways they were providing the same service. In June of 1967 the agency was incorporated as Big Brothers of Sarnia. Brother Al was the agency’s first Executive Director and he ran the agency on a volunteer basis. His commitment to the agency is obvious in that he continues to be an active volunteer with the agency three decades later! In 1973 the agency saw the need for expanded services to cover all of Lambton County. At that time the name of the agency was changed to Big Brothers of Sarnia-Lambton. Since then, a satellite office in Forest has been established in order to better meet the needs of children in the county. The agency now has five staff members and has expanded its programs to include a Couple Matching program and an In-School Mentoring program.