Back-to-school campaign match highlight: Destinee and Kia

This guest post was submitted by Big Sister Kia from Big Sister Association of Greater Boston. Kia was matched with her Little Sister, Destinee, through MMP’s Back-to-School campaign last year.

1. Tell us a little about yourself and your mentee’s backgrounds.
   I am a physician assistant at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the eldest sister of four siblings. My Little Sister Destinee is 15-years-old and a 10th grader at a METCO school. Destinee has a younger sister who is 10-years-old and also a “Little Sister.”  We have been matched through Big Sister Association of Greater Boston for more than a year. We enjoy going to the movies, having pizza night, and spending time exploring museums and festivals around Boston.
2. How did you hear about the Back-to-School campaign and what prompted you to get involved as a mentor?
   I was prompted to become a mentor because I know the value of having a good mentor in your life to help you through various aspects in your life. There are so many pressures in a young girl’s life and navigating it alone can be a challenge. I have had great women in my life to help me with all the challenges that life has brought me. I just want to do the same for Destinee.
3. What impact has your mentoring relationship had on you and your mentee?
   One of the best moments for me is when Destinee had the courage to stand in front of a room filled with Big and Little Sisters to tell me how much I mean to her in her life. Helping her navigate the struggles with her mother while entering high school was a difficult time for her.  She mentioned that by encouraging her to communicate better, I helped her to have a better relationship with her mother today. It’s still a struggle but we take each battle one day at a time.
4. What would you say to those who are on the fence about mentoring (i.e. those who think they do not have enough time, expertise, etc.)?
   I’ve spoken with many women who feel like they don’t have the time or skills to give back to a young girl. When I share my personal experiences and tell them how rewarding mentoring is both for me and Destinee, people tend to reconsider. There are so many options Big Sister has in programming  that it makes it easier for women to see how they can fit in, especially if they already have that desire to give back to their community and help a young girl. I’m currently a community-based mentor and enjoy the ability to take my Little Sister to events locally. Speaking with other Big Sisters in different programming, I’ve seen they too have increased satisfaction spending time with their Little Sisters in their own way.

Big Sister’s success with our back-to-school campaign

Nikki White is the recruitment coordinator at Big Sister Association of Greater Boston

At Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, our mission is to help girls realize their full potential by providing them with positive mentoring relationship with women. This year, our goal is to serve 3,000 girls, which we do through our Community-Based and School-Based 1-1 Mentoring and our Group programs.

The School-Based program, in which we partner with nearly 30 schools and community sites, is where we focused our marketing efforts for Mass Mentoring Partnership’s Back-to-School Mentor Recruitment Campaign. This one-to-one mentoring program creates matches between elementary school girls and women mentors. They meet once a week throughout the academic year, at the girl’s school either during her lunchtime or after-school program. Each match decides how to spend their time together, whether it’s playing board games, reading a book together, or reviewing homework assignments.

We designed three strategies with the seed grant we were awarded through this campaign. First, we promoted our Facebook presence and brand visibility through Facebook ads directed to our page. Second, we promoted our School-Based program through Facebook ads directing to our website and targeting the hard-to-reach neighborhoods of Charlestown, Dorchester, and Quincy. Third, we are placing ads in neighborhood e-newspapers directed towards our School-Based program in those same neighborhoods for National Mentoring Month in January.

The first strategy increased our “likes” on Facebook in November by 57% with 40 new likes in one week. We moved from 18 daily users of our page to 64. Although we had been seeing consistent growth of traffic to our Facebook page, we hadn’t seen this large of an increase before.

For the second strategy, we saw the same click-through rate of 133 being directed towards our Become a Big Sister page. In the week prior to our campaign, we saw 1.8% of the people who went to the Big Sister Association website come from Facebook. In the week of the campaign, 12% of the people going to our website were coming from Facebook. In November, we had also seen correlations in the increase of applications and inquiries coming in through the media.

The third strategy that we are going to implement is placing School-Based ads in specific neighborhood newspapers in Dorchester, Charlestown and Quincy in January when college students are coming back from school vacation.

We know that the back-to-school months are a crucial time to recruit women mentors. Fall is the start of a new year for many women. It is the season where college-age women fall back into the college schedule and it is also a time where working women have come back from a variety of summer activities and are ready to be involved in their community. By being able to create targeted Facebook advertisements during this busy time, it allowed us to reach women who we may not have been able to reach through typical event recruitment.

Sen. Katherine Clark: The importance of mentors

Senator Katherine Clark, who recently joined with us in supporting the Mentoring Matching Grants line item in the state budget, penned an op-ed this week about the importance of mentoring as children head back to school. She also highlighted several of our member programs in her district, including the Melrose Alliance Against Violence’s Community CARES Mentoring program, the Wakefield Adult Mentors program and the YWCA Malden Group Mentoring program. Please read her article below and learn how you can get involved by searching for mentoring opportunities near you on our website.

Sen. Katherine Clark: The importance of mentors – Melrose, Massachusetts – Melrose Free Press.

3 Ways Mentoring Inspires Meaningful Relationships

We wanted to share this great piece about why mentoring is inspiring from Reena De Asis, Marketing and Nonprofit Relations Director for Causecast.

3 Ways Mentoring Inspires Meaningful Relationships .