 I have a proclamation to present and I'd like to call up Denise Wittstock from Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Sheboygan County, Krista Singh from Boys and Girls Clubs, and Sharpe Acne Act from Horizon for Girls is joining us remotely. A proclamation whereas January is National Mentoring Month, celebrating the benefits of youth mentoring across the country and locally. We recognize Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Sheboygan County, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Sheboygan County, and Horizon for Girls and other organizations for their youth mentoring efforts. And whereas every day in Sheboygan and communities across the country, caring adults volunteer their time with mentoring programs to create consistent supportive relationships with young people. At its most basic level, mentoring is successful in real life because it guarantees that young people have an adult to turn to and that they have a guiding hand to help them in dealing with day-to-day challenges. At a more complex level, there's a powerful mentoring effect that ultimately makes our communities stronger. And whereas quality mentoring programs are proven to build relationships that help to improve school attendance, academic achievement, and to promote responsible decision-making, and also provide skills to better navigate relationships at school, socially, and at home. And whereas a report by Mentor, the National Mentoring Partnership, found that young adults who were at risk for not completing high school but had a mentor were 55% more likely to be enrolled in college than those who did not have a mentor, 81% more likely to report participating regularly in sports or extracurricular activities and more than twice is likely to say that they held a leadership position in a club or sports team and 78% more likely to volunteer regularly in their communities. Whereas mentoring programs have shown to be effective in combating school violence, discipline problems, substance abuse, and incarceration and truancy. Now therefore, I, Mike Van der Steen, Mayor of the City of Sheboygan, do hereby declare January of 2021 National Mentoring Month in Sheboygan, and call upon public officials, businesses, and community leaders and educators, and encourage all residents of Sheboygan to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs in order to recognize the men and women who served as staff and volunteers at local mentoring programs and who help young people find inner strength to reach their full potential. And with a great deal of pride, I'm presenting these proclamations to both of these organizations and we'll give Shires to her later. But I'd like to ask them to come up and tell us just a little bit about their program and what's happening in their mentoring program, especially how they're responding to COVID. Denise? Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Van der Steen and everyone for this honor. We're very excited to celebrate National Mentoring Month. I thought I'd take just a few brief moments to share a little bit about Big Brothers Big Sisters. I think everyone probably knows this, the traditional model of what we do, which is the concept of pairing an at-risk quote-unquote youth with a caring adult. But what some people don't realize is that for over 100 years, this organization has been really fulfilling that sole mission in over 15 countries in the world and every 50 state here in the United States. Shewagon County is the oldest in the state of Wisconsin and we've served over 22,000 youth in our time here since 1965. And I wanted to respond to your comment about how we've transitioned during COVID just a little bit. We're in the human relationship business and so we took a pause to move our staff to work remotely. But after that, we didn't really have much of a pause. We inserted some technology into our programs, but otherwise we've been keeping bigs and littles and families closer than ever because this is a time of crisis for families that are facing a lot of struggles during normal times. And we've continued to make matches. We've continued to transition programs in our schools to make sure that kids are staying connected and safe, having that technology to reach out and feel supported when they've lost their single social, often single social system, which is their school. And one of the things that we're really excited about is some of the firsts that we've experienced this year. We have officially, in this council, we've experienced our first official contract of partnership of, I don't know, are we dating now? Is that what we say? Between the Shewagon Police Department and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, to officially bring a formal program of Bigs with Badges to the community. Chief Demagowski has been wonderful in helping spearhead that initiative and spreading it throughout the county to engage law enforcement with youth that potentially might have a preconceived notion about what law enforcement is or isn't in our community. We're excited to be looking at a five-year pilot starting this fall with the Shewagon Area School District with technology-enhanced mentoring and the high school setting, focusing on academic and career preparedness. And if there's one thing we've learned in the last 12 months, it's that human connection is really vital for kids particularly. Our professional degree staff work with families sometimes up to 13 years. And so we get to know families and kids very, very well. And we have become a very trusted partner for over 800 people in this community. We've helped Bigs that never thought they would have to navigate the social sector and apply for food services. We've helped families navigate how to pay for a family member's burial expense because they were visiting from another country. And we've had kids, five and six-year-old kids build relationships with really cool adults on a tablet for the first time ever. So we've had some really cool experiences and it's really kept our staff moving forward and knowing that even when our days are very, very long, the work that we're doing is worthwhile. So for those of you in the room that have participated with us and shared your time, we appreciate it. Captain Todd, an amazing chef if you didn't know that, administrator will. Chad, chief, thank you and we're excited to be here. Thank you very much. Christina from Boys and Girls Clubs. All right. We good on the sound? So I'm Christina Singh. I lead the Boys and Girls Clubs here in Sheboygan County. And the Boys and Girls Clubs provides kids ages six to 18 with equitable opportunities, safe spaces, and vital resources. This past year that looked a little bit like delivering meals and grocery store gift cards to address food insecurity, it looked like developing virtual programming options, getting thousands of activity kits out to kids who needed them, expanding our teen program hours, and also opening a program for 10 hours a day when schools switched to virtual learning so that we could support kids who didn't have internet access or a positive home environment. On top of innovating our services, we also opened a new location at Jefferson Elementary for before and after school programming. And every step of the way, we prioritize the physical and emotional safety of our youth. So regardless of the circumstances, our club delivers outcome based programming in three core areas. And that's academic success, healthy lifestyles, and good character and citizenship. For every kid, the formula for success looks a little bit different. And that's why our staff are trained to build positive mentoring relationships with the kids. It's an important ingredient for everything we do. And it really enables kids to improve their outcomes in our three core program areas. So Mayor Vandersen mentioned some statistics about kids being 55 percent more likely to enroll in college if they regularly meet with a mentor, 78 percent more likely to regularly volunteer, and 130 percent more likely to pursue leadership type positions if they have a mentor. So statistics and numbers aside, our staff are sometimes the only positive adult relationship that youth have. And so they're often the first to notice abuse or neglect, the first to hear about a big problem or challenge at home, the first to celebrate a teen's new job. So we form those relationships with our youth in order to help them succeed. And it's really at the core of what Boys and Girls Club programming is all about. So for all you mentors out there, you are champions of youth. And I thank you. I'm grateful to Mayor Vandersen and to all of those who support programs like Ours, and all of those who either work in a mentoring capacity or volunteer to mentor youth. So thank you so much. Thank you very much, Christina. Shara Pacniak, are you there? Well, we also thank all the work that Shara does with Horizon for Girls. So let's give these girls a big hand for all the efforts that they put forth in their organization. And we also remember all their boards that helped them to manage things, and then all the volunteers who volunteer in the community. So thank you very much.