 First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Shar-Spec Pacniak. I'm the executive director and the founder of a program called Horizons for Girls. We mentor middle school and high school female students, typically the students that would be called at risk, trying to help them navigate life. Definitely a challenge sometimes, but also very rewarding. What's exciting for me is January is National Mentoring Month. I think that gives us a chance to shine the spotlight on some great program that really goes on. I'd like to introduce Denise and I'm going to let you introduce yourself a little bit because I've worked for many years with Kim and I'd really like to know a little bit more about who's Denise, where'd you come from, what's your vision? So I'm going to turn it over to you, talk about yourself, talk about big brothers, big sisters, talk about some things that you've got planned. Obviously we're dealing with COVID, so that definitely affects what we do. And we've got some exciting news about what happened in the evening. Well, thanks so much, Shar. I appreciate you having me today. I am Denise Whitstock. I'm the CEO for Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Sheboygan County. I took the role, was given the role, I should say, in May of 2017 when Tim Kaker retired after 42 years. I was born and raised in the Sheboygan area, but left shortly after high school and did some college and post-secondary education in the Phoenix, Arizona area and returned to Wisconsin about 21, 22 years later in 2016 with my husband and two small children. I had spent my first, probably the first 15 years of my career. I had worked in the for-profit arena in international sales and marketing, but I always found myself in whatever company I was with, kind of drawn to that corporate social responsibility piece of the puzzle. And I found myself really helping organize initiatives, team walks, ways that the company could contribute and give back to the community. And in 2009, I went back to college again for a second master's degree in nonprofit management leadership and found that it really was a very, very unique blend of my skills and my passions. And was fortunate to be offered a management position at Phoenix Children's Hospital, which was kind of unique. I managed volunteer services and animal assisted therapy, actually. So volunteer services was an operational, operationally funded department and animal assisted therapy was completely funded by philanthropy. And so I was able to not only hone my skills in volunteer management, marketing and community engagement, but also really leverage what I've learned in my master's program about the philosophy behind philanthropy, engaging the community from a philanthropic standpoint, and tying all of those pieces together for positive outcomes for kids that were being treated in the level one trauma center. And when we came back to Wisconsin, I worked for a period of time for the United Way in Manitowoc County and then heard of the opportunity with Big Brother's Big Sisters in Shawagan County with Tim's pending retirement. And having a chance to lead an organization, one, when you work in the nonprofit sector, obviously there are many, many causes that you find incredibly important, but serving youth is really where my passion lies. And Big Brother's Big Sisters obviously is an organization that leverages a very large volunteer force, which was where my expertise had come into play. So it seemed like a really great opportunity to blend my experience, my passion, and really affect some change in the community that I'd grown up in. Getting to know Shawagan County as an adult, having left it as an 18-year-old bright-eyed girl, was really interesting and different. And I quickly learned that Shawagan County has the same social issues and challenges as anywhere else in the nation. Here it's just proportionate by population. And as I raise now three small children in this area, I really wanted to see how I could leverage my skills and talents to affect some positive change for kids. And our organization has really gone through quite a transformation in the last four years, particularly as a national federation, we've had a rebranding exercise take place because on a nationwide trend, we saw that volunteerism was on the decline. The number of kids we were serving was on a decline. And we really were able to identify that a lot of that had to do with a lack of a decline in relevance. Younger generations really weren't seeing and understanding the benefits of more formal quote-unquote mentoring. And Big Brother's Big Sisters as a brand had lost a little bit of relevance among some of the younger generations. And so in 2018, Shawagan County as the oldest Big Brother's Big Sisters in Wisconsin, very happily launched a rebrand. And we've embraced the new vision for the organization, which is that all youth have the ability to reach their full potential, whatever that potential may be. That's one of the things I love about this organization is we are spectators and supporters along a child's journey to whatever they're meant to become as an adult. If you want to become a plumber, let's do it. If you want to become an astrophysicist, let's do it. If you wanna become any number of things in between, that's what we're here for, is to support you and try to help give you some of the resources and confidence and tools to help get you there along the way. We have had the good fortune of lots and lots of experience in our organization. We've had, since I joined the group, we've had several long-time employees retire and share with us decades of experience and intellectual capital and knowledge and relationships. We've had some amazing new folks join our team. And we have, most recently, of course, if we talk about 2020, because that's what's still on everyone's mind, I think we've really seen how important and how absolutely vital maintaining human connection for kids really is. As we have lost, as kids have lost their main social connection, which is school, in many instances, that's what they have. They don't have other social outlets. They've lost school. They've lost after-school activities. They've lost sports and clubs. But we found we were in a very unique position because they didn't lose their big and they didn't lose us. We were very quickly able to add technology to options, to offer them to our participants so that they could remain connected. We helped teach people how to use certain devices and cameras and things like that. We helped provide technology to families that didn't have access. We work with many of the kids, as you described, who might be labeled at risk in some way, at risk for not succeeding academically, at risk for food insecurity or unstable housing, at risk for trauma or abuse. And one of the things that we found very quickly was access to technology was a challenge for those families. And so we were able to add, enhance, I don't like to use the word pivot anymore because it's been used so often, but we were able to very quickly take a moment, assess what we could still do and then move forward with those things. So we've transitioned. We actually added four people to our team during the 2020 calendar year. We've now grown to a staff of 10 and relocated to a new beautiful location in downtown Sheboygan. We have really been able to dig deep and expand the relationships we had, not only with parents and littles and kids, but with the bigs that we serve. So we serve roughly about 700 people between all of those parties. And what we found was during 2020, we were one of the few trusted resources that each one of them knew that they could turn to and ask questions, express fears, wonder what was next or what might be out there for them. And so we were able to help families and bigs in a way that we just hadn't quite done before. All the while trying to maintain a focus on keeping kids connected to their bigs, keeping them connected to safe trusted adults, keeping them connected to, and the family connected to resources to ensure that they had household supplies and food and support or resources for knowledge when it came to housing stability, rental assistance. We helped with funeral preparations. We helped with prescription refills. We helped with all kinds of things. So I think it really opened our staff's eyes to how important we are in the family safety net, so to speak, for the people we work with. But what we really saw by the end of 2020 is how incredibly important us being a consistent figure and a consistent voice in those families really is for kids. Kids are struggling, it doesn't matter. I have little kids who are wondering why they can't see their friends in preschool. And for other kids that have lost that connection, have uncertainty, have been spending time alone because families are working, it's a challenging time. And so we're really hoping that the collaborations we've deepened with other partner agencies in the community, the plans we have for growth and expansion, the recruitment we've done to have bigs in the wings, waiting, that we're ready and prepared to help serve and support kids, particularly from a stability and mental health perspective, once the world looks a little bit different again and we're able to start spending time together. Excuse me, what happened on Monday evening? Monday evening, you and I got to join Christina Singh from Boys and Girls Club to have bestowed upon us a proclamation by Mayor Mike Van der Steen from the city of Sheboygan, proclaiming January National Mentoring Month, which was very exciting. I think we're really excited. We've nominated Mayor Van der Steen to the Mayor for Mentoring Initiative, which is a nationwide initiative led by mentor.org. He has had a long history with our organization, having served on the board in the past and understands the value of a mentor, just like all of us, if we all think back to coaches and teachers and scout leaders and people in our lives, colleagues, supervisors, we've all had mentors along the way that have helped make us who we are and shape our own leadership and success. And he supports the concept very strongly and I'm excited to be working very closely with the city of Sheboygan, county executives, the police departments and law enforcement around the community to really spread the message of how important having a mentor can be to a child's future. It's priceless. When I talk to the students and they share the different things that they really appreciate, we've been in existence. This coming school year will be our 10th school year that we are doing what we do. And they stay with us. Quite a few of our students have graduated the program. They continue to come back. They are now trained to be peer-to-peer mentors. Oh, that's wonderful. And it's fun because I'm a grandmother. So I can share my insight with a student but when a peer shares, same thing I'm thinking, they listen, they sit up and they pay attention. And that thing is awesome. I was sharing with you right before we started. One of the students who is now a peer-to-peer mentor is actually completing her citizenship now. She's married, she's a mother. She has completed some college and she's gonna be going back for some more college. And she served in the AmeriCorps. And when she started the program, she was on track to quit school. In the family, she is Hispanic and the family did not feel there was a value to education. So she was gonna get married and have babies. And that was it. And so to make that transition for her and the family was very rewarding. It's exciting. One of the things we've got coming up, I think it's mid-March, is we're working with Meade Library. And my students are going to be reading to the little kids some books. And I have two students, including Guadalupe, who is going to read the book that she's picked out in English and in Spanish. So I think that's gonna be exciting to be able to offer that choice to the toddlers. I'm excited about that kind of thing. Sure, absolutely. Well, it says something about how impactful the program has been. And we've all been teenagers before. You don't always realize what's good for you at the time. And you don't always wanna hear what's being the knowledge that's being bestowed on you at the time. But it says a lot for participants in the program to be able to take that pause and understand that there's been value there and I'm a better person because I had this person and then make the decision to wanna pay that forward. That's really exciting. It is. I mean, I've been invited to graduations, to weddings, to baptisms. It becomes a family. And that's exciting. I can remember a few years ago, there was a substantial fire in the South Side of Sheboygan and we got together the next day and two of the students said, we've gotta do something right now. And they wanted door-to-door and collected toys and clothes and food items for those families that were displaced by that fire. So that to me says a lot because again, it's a population that the general public sometimes wants to dismiss. Sure. They're the troublemakers. We don't wanna deal with those children and that's not right. It's been a challenge obviously this year is COVID and as we're working with our students now, we are doing everything virtually. We meet with students as a group in Zoom and then we also offer meeting with a mentor one-on-one. I have one tutor and she is just so excited because we've got an autistic young lady, she will graduate this year. And she, again, the school system even said, we're not sure how far she's gonna go. And it's okay, she's disabled, she's got services. And this young lady said, no, I want to graduate. And the tutor is meeting with her online twice a week to make sure that she completes the assignments. And that's exciting. I mean, the tutor said, I wanna go to the graduation. I said, hey, if they've got a graduation, go for it. That's exciting. And you can see those successes. Well, and I think that for programs like ours, mentors sometimes go into it or people, individuals sometimes go into the experience thinking, ooh, I don't know if I'm qualified. Like there's a big expectation of certain things like this. And one of the things that we will have a focus on even more in depth this coming year is really kind of setting the stage and giving our volunteers a little bit more in-depth peek into the circumstances and some of the details around what kind of makes or defines that at-risk category. What does poverty look like? What does trauma look like? What does it mean to be food insecure? And it's little wins that go a long way. We have two things that have happened just in the last few months that I think they're small to some, but signify huge wins in progress for what we consider in our outcomes. We have a boy, a little brother in our program who had a run-in with the law. He has a big brother that he's been paired with for five years. And he has been spending time in a juvenile facility to have some restitution and counseling and things like that to just kind of get himself back on track. And he and his big had a conversation and they've been matched for five years. So this wasn't, but this hadn't come up before. And they were talking about, the little brother made a comment about how he knew that this probably was just a matter of time before he'd end up in jail. And the big brother said, well, why do you say that? Well, that's what happens. That's what happens to boys and men. And his brother and father and grandfather and uncles and every man in his life has been incarcerated, is or has been incarcerated at some point. And his big brother said, well, I've never been to jail. Well, what about your non-mobie and my family's ever been to jail? And they had that moment together and the little brother really put the pieces together. And this was the first man in his life that he'd met that did not have that experience. And so he literally was able to put the pieces together 13 years old and say, you mean I might not have to, that might not be how I have to live. And so they had a lengthy conversation after that. And the big, which is a testament to my team, of course, the big called us and said, holy cow, this conversation, I was doing it all wrong. It's so easy. I had no idea. And so we had this conversation. And the bottom line is we literally in that moment changed the trajectory or what that little boy believes is his trajectory for his future. There is something different for him out there because he just didn't have any exposure to a different kind of experience up to that point. And so that is, it seems so small because the outsider might say, well, he should have known. But if that's all you have is your own family experience and you're a child, you don't know any different. You don't see any different. And so that's just kind of exciting. I mean, that's a story that in that moment, if they hadn't had that conversation, who knows what would have happened. But now that they have, we know we can support that. We can continue those conversations. We can have that, we can break down that perception that has been guiding his decision-making and his own viewing himself in his own self-image. It's different now. That's exciting. It is exciting. To totally redirect and be able to reposition what the future is for that little is just, oh my God. Yeah. And it was so simple. And the big said, oh my gosh, I never thought I didn't even think I needed to talk about that kind of stuff. Or I thought he would just know. And it's like, well, they don't always know. They're still just kids. And they're coming from environments that look different than many of our environments. And many of the kids we serve, as I'm sure are in your program, they come from loving families. They come, we have a lot of kids in our program that have loving two-parent households, but the parents are unemployed or underemployed. They're not around. They don't have a particular type of experience. Some of our parents didn't graduate from high school themselves. And so they would love for their child to have another adult friend that can show them what it looks like when you do graduate high school or go to college. And it's just, anybody can benefit from having another trusted voice, another trusted friend that can help show them everything that might be possible for them. It totally changes the landscape. And it totally, I mean, the possibilities are endless. You know, and a real quick story that I was that very quiet, shy person. I did not talk to anybody. I never would have thought of doing something like this. And I ended up after serving on some local leadership positions with the business and professional women. I ended up eventually being the state president or Wisconsin and had to serve on a national board of directors. Well, I had some incredible mentors that helped me. I mean, they would dress me, they would do my makeup, my hair. I mean, they would talk to me about what I was going to say, how I was going to say ifs. You know, those mentors are absolutely priceless. So tell me, what do you have planned for this coming year? We're looking at launching a five year pilot's program, a brand new program, new to Sheboygan, not new to big brothers, big sisters of America, but a technology enhanced high school focused program that includes instructed curriculum on academic and career readiness in conjunction with Inspire Sheboygan County and the principals and guidance counselors within the schools themselves. And then the mentors, they connect through technology. So mentors are really kind of focused on helping students with that self exploration, helping facilitate and support that curriculum, job at shadowing, job experience, career exploration, all that kind of thing. So the schools will identify students that are potentially at risk of not graduating or could benefit from a little bit of extra focus in that area. And many of them may be kids that potentially could have, probably should have been in our program a little earlier, but now they're, this is something that they can benefit from. So we're excited about a five year pilot there. I think between all of us, if we all kind of come up with these things, we may have the capacity to affect change with all the kids that are out there and can benefit from it. So we're excited about that. We'll be launching that pilot in September at Central High School in Sheboygan, with the Sheboygan Area School District and Inspire Sheboygan County. They'll be a part of that. We are looking forward to leveraging an electronic learning system that our national organization has put into place and really launching a library of resources for our bigs and littles and parents related to categories of things that can help mentors feel more confident and competent in their support, helping provide resources for strengthening families, looking at mindfulness exercises. We had a great partnership that we've designed with Mental Health America to bring mindfulness to our bigs and littles and looking at some potential growth in the company and in the service area that we look at. That's maybe a little bit sooner on the horizon, but not quite having all the details ironed out yet, but looking at an expansion of our service area as well. Excellent, excellent. So if somebody wanted more information, what would you tell them? You can visit our website, bbbssc.org, or give our office a call at 458-0111. The website has a lot of information about becoming a big refer-in-your-child, because we work with families as well, about having youth enrolled, our events, our different committees and teams, our board of directors, all the different ways that people can get involved. And together we're gonna make it an awesome, awesome, awesome community. Thank you very much for sharing your information with us for Horizons for Girls. Definitely check out our website, horizons, number four, girls.com. Lots of exciting ways to get involved, to make a difference, and that to me is what it's all about. So thanks for joining us. And I look forward to talking to everybody in probably about a month. And I hope you enjoy, good night to Spark.