Our Programs
In order to effectively help youth and their families, The Catholic Big Sisters and Big Brothers has designed comprehensive programming that adheres to a family systems model. Our programs are gender specific, meaning they were designed with the specific needs of boys and girls in mind. The three main programs we offer are mentoring, counseling and skill based programs.
After many years of research on the specific needs of girls and women, all CBSBB programming for girls focus on these five core concepts:
- Relational learning that stresses the crucial role of strong female role models
- The importance of teaching in a collaborative manner while incorporating competitive learning opportunities
- Creating an all-girl environment that promotes healthy and safe risk-taking
- Addressing and combating mass-media influences on women today
- Experiential teaching that utilizes real life issues pertinent to girls’ lives.
New and innovative programming for boys center on these five concepts:
Providing opportunities for ownership, leadership and positive reinforcement in order to increase positive conformity. Male behavior comes to reflect what is stimulated, encouraged and rewarded in a particular social context.
- Teaching empathy and compassion through community service
- Creating an all-male environment that allows for vulnerability, emotional expression and peer mediation
- Addressing stereotypes related to class, race, culture and gender; and exposing the boys to various definitions of manhood
- Using a combination of cognitive restructuring (changing boys' ideas) and behavioral rehearsal (practicing alternatives to violence)
