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Big and Little Brother David and Flavio from Big Brother/Big Sister of America

NEW YORK, NY August 31, 2006 —Over the course of history volunteering has been thought of as women’s work. Even though females are just as busy as their male counterparts these days– they work long hours and attend college at a higher rate - the pattern remains the same. For most non-profits seeking volunteers, gender doesn’t matter. But for Big Brother, Big Sister programs in the city, it means boys are being deprived of much needed mentors. Several organizations say their waiting lists are full of mothers and their young sons. WNYC’s Cindy Rodriguez reports

REPORTER: Keila Rodney and her 14 year old son live in a neat brick house on a quiet well-kept block in Canarsie Brooklyn.

She sits on a couch in her stylish living room. A breeze is blowing through the open windows and the rumbling of trucks can be heard outside:

RODNEY: Shane are you there….come here

REPORTER: Shane Ceasar will be a freshman in high school this fall. His mother describes him as a lover of Shakespeare Nature and sports.

SHANE: I’ve been interested in getting a mentor because I live in the middle of nowhere Brooklyn it’s hard to get around and go to the city and even if I can get there there’s noone to go with so it would be fun to have someone to go with or hang around with.

REPORTER: Keila Rodney says her son has expensive taste and big dreams that include going to Harvard, snowboarding and traveling to Brazil. He says he fell in love with the country after watching the independent film, City of God.

RODNEY: Shane happens to be very brilliant and has to have something to do at all times and I feel the wrong influence is going to be downhill for him.

REPORTER: The single mom has been waiting more than a year to find a Big Brother for her son. She’s tried two different programs so far:

RODNEY: There are no males at all. And at one point he said he would take a female if he has to cuz he really wanted one. He think there’s something wrong with him, he was beginning to think that.

REPORTER: Rodney is a nurse and says she works 12 hours a day taking care of comatose patients on ventilators. She says she has little time to spend with her son and its tough keeping up with him. She believes having a mentor for Shane would make her life easier.

The commitment to be a mentor is nothing to take lightly. Prospective candidates must often pass background checks and go through extensive interviews that can last several hours. Once they’re in, Bigs, as they are called are expected to see their “Littles” twice a month for about four hours each time. The relationship is supposed to last at least a year but ideally it will go much longer. Trips to museums, ball games and parks are some of the activities that are encouraged.

Shane says he would like to be taken canoeing or hiking or some place where he could see the stars at night. He also wants to learn more about urban life:

SHANE: When you go into Manhattan you see huge buildings but you don’t know much about them you just see them so I wanted to know more about the city.

REPORTER: The slightly nervous and awkward teenager is far from the only child waiting for a male figure to enter his life. Stacy Stringer is the project director of Big Brothers, Big Sisters Catholic Charities in Brooklyn and Queens, the program currently trying to find a match for Shane:

STRINGER: Right now our waiting list is about, it’s just under 100 children and the comparison is about 85 percent little brothers on that.

REPORTER: Stringer says a lack of male volunteers has been a long standing problem:

STRINGER: I think mentoring programs, Big Brothers-Big Sisters certainly, have all tried to target men because we get so many women who are so willing to give their time..I don’t know if I could say why women are volunteering more than men.

REPORTER: Allan Luks thinks he knows:

LUKS: I truly believe it’s conditioning, conditioning, conditioning

REPORTER: Luks is the executive director of Big Brothers, Big Sisters of New York City. The largest mentoring program in the country:

LUKS: We in society can recondition men in a simple way by once they start to help they feel good about themselves and the more men who do this and they talk to their friends and neighbors and their co-workers hey I feel great. I’m helping Johnny and Johnny’s doing great and it spreads….

REPORTER: While males volunteer the least they are the one’s needed the most. Luks says it’s mostly single moms who come to programs seeking adult role models for their young boys. In order to draw men in the group ran print ads in People, Esquire and Money magazine. It also invested in a series of postcards. One features NY 1 anchor Gary Anthony Ramsey:

LUKS: I’ll just read a little bit from the ad. I work 60 to 70 hours a week, I’m the weekend anchor for a 24 hour news station in New York City. I’m on the board of two charities. I’m married and have two children. I work out. I eat out. I go out like most families and yes. I’m a Big Brother. How can you say you don’t have the time

REPORTER: Luks believes a lack of time is the main reason people don’t volunteer. In addition to the ad blitz, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of New York City is trying to get corporate America to allow their employees to volunteer while on the clock. 37 corporations have signed on so far including Goldman Sachs. 47 year old Walt Jackson has been at the prestigious firm for 9 years and recently took part in the company sponsored mentorship program. During the spring he and 27 other investment bankers met with 14, 7th graders for about an hour and a half each month:

JACKSON: My little’s name was Jose. He was Mexican. His family moved here when he was a baby and he liked sports, was a big Yankees fan.

REPORTER: Jackson says the time with the teenagers was spent teaching them the basics of finance, economics and letter writing.

JACKSON: We as a group really enjoyed getting to know these kids from a different background than we’re from…

REPORTER: And in return he says the kids got a taste of what it’s like to work for a large corporation:

JACKSON: On one occasion we actually brought the students over to our desks and let them sit and write letter on the computer and so they got to see the office environment and see what where the big brother got to sit everyday and see his work.

REPORTER: Jackson says for a group of people who often work until midnight, the sessions were a nice break in the middle of the day. The banker who lives in New Jersey has a wife and kids and says mentoring on his own time would likely not have been possible. The group of investment bankers expects to work with the same kids this school year too. The hope is to stay with them through high school.

While recruiting from Wall Street is one strategy, Luks is quick to encourage all types of men to volunteer.

In Canarsie, Brooklyn Shane Ceasar has not really considered what kind of job his future Big Brother would hold:

SHANE: I actually didn’t think about what my mentor would do on his own time…

REPORTER: What he has considered are the benefits of having someone older and hopefully smarter at his disposal:

SHANE: I thought having a mentor would make my life easier because there’s someone to talk to about who’s not closely related to your life like they’re not in your family so you can talk to them without having to worry about anything.

REPORTER: Until the right person shows up, Keila Rodney says she will do her best to keep her curious son satisfied and in line:

RODNEY: It’s hard, really hard….I’m hopeful he will get one soon. I’m hoping it’s like really, really soon.

For wnyc, I’m Cindy Rodriguez

LINKS:

ccbq.org
bigsnyc.org