BIG News for Our BBBS Families!

We have some exciting news to share with you! Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washtenaw was recently awarded a grant through Children Trust Michigan that will enable us to implement a wonderful new program for our families called Keep Connected! 

Children Trust Michigan (CTM) focuses solely on financially supporting a variety of agencies across the state that are involved in preventing child abuse and neglect and the Keep Connected program is designed to provide famlies with the foundational support that is so important to a young person’s growth, learning, and well-being. As their website states,Keep Connected “offers all kinds of families—and organizations that support them—ideas, activities, and experiences to help build strong family relationships. Our goal is to strengthen family relationships to help kids be and become their best selves.”

With this funding, BBBS program staff will be able to attend the Keep Connected Institute for Strengthening Family Relationships and become trained facilitators in providing the ideas, activities, and experiences that Keep Connected utilizes in their quest to help build stronger family relationships and help kids become the best versions of themselves they can be. Our staff will then take this training and use it as they work with a trusted panel of parent advisors to develop an engagement, implementation, and evaluation plan for our upcoming Keep Connected Family Nights. 

In addition to the training of our existing staff, this grant has also enabled us to bring a new Family Engagement Coordinator on board to oversee all aspects of this new program and we are thrilled to announce that we have hired Keyera North to fill this position! Keyera is an Ypsilanti native with a solid background in family development and support and says she is looking forward to serving and working with the youth, families, and community members through the Keep Connected program. 

We are so happy to have Keyera as part of our team and are looking forward to utilizing the Keep Connected training to facilitate the growth of our beloved BBBS families in the upcoming year!