Mentoring Works

Along with Bryony the novel, we are producing a Bryony cookbook of the foods mentioned in the story. Any profit will be donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties (http://www.bbbswillgrundy.org/).

This is our tribute to Steve Barnes, the mentor for Bryony's main character, Melissa, and her younger brother, Brian.

To help raise money for the organization, Bryony is a lane sponsor for this year's BB BS Bowl for Kids' Sake. Bryony also has two teams bowling in tomorrow evening's event, too: Just Steve and Stake and Blade. We've been hard at work raising the necessary pledges, and we're nearly there.

Although Steve and all the Bryony characters are fiction, stastics show mentoring works, and we want to be a part of it.

The BB BS website states:

Researchers found that after 18 months of spending time with their Bigs, the Little Brothers and Little Sisters were:

• 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs
  
• 27% less likely to begin using alcohol
  
• 52% less likely to skip school
  
• 37% less likely to skip a class
  
• more confident of their performance in schoolwork
  
• one-third less likely to hit someone
  
• getting along better with their families

Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteers had the greatest impact in the area of alcohol and substance abuse prevention. For every 100 youth between ages 10 and 16 who start using drugs, the study found, only 54 similar youth who are matched with a Big will start using drugs. Minority boys and girls were the most strongly influenced; they were 70 percent less likely than their peers to initiate drug use.

It takes $1000 to match one child with an adult mentor. BB BS hopes to raise $100, 000 with the bowling event. For more information about Bowl for Kids' Sake visit http://bfks.kintera.org/.