Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Bowlers Will Score Pledges for Big Brothers/Big Sisters

Participants in the “Bowl for Kids' Sake” fund-raiser for the McDonough County Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization will score strikes, spares and pledges.

In fact, it's the biggest fund-raiser for the organization each year.  

Paula Rhodes is a board member. She has been a mentor or “big” to two children over the last 15 years. Her first “little” moved away but they keep in contact.

She says, “A flute that I purchased for her so she could be in the band-she's still playing that flute. Those kind of benefits are just wonderful memories.”

Rhodes says she saved a lot of those memories in photos.

She says, “I took multiple photographs of them. And they put them in a scrapbook. and even my 15 year old, now, 'little'  loves to go through and see pictures of herself doing cartwheels in my living room when she was about seven.”

Program Director Kim Lampitt says the organization carefully matches mentors and children.

She says, “When we do the interviews with the children and their parents and the volunteer we ask what their interests are. For example, we'll ask the little what kind of Big Brother or Big Sister would you like to have...and we do the same thing for the 'big' so we look at common interests.”
 
Board president Dan Yoder says most of the mentors work with children from single family homes. He says, ”That doesn't mean that a child with both parents in the home could not come to us and be served with an adult mentor. We have a few like that.”

He says, “Young people who have good, adult mentors do better in school. They just do much better if they have good, solid adult mentors.

Lampitt says the event brings in between $15,000 and $20,000 for the program. All that money remains in McDonough County.

“Bowl for Kids' Sake” will be September 29th at Digger's College City Bowl in Macomb.