While it’s hard to look back on 2020, the last year taught us more about the importance of human connection, community and resilience than we ever imagined. Our Bigs became a frontline resource to support kids’ social and emotional wellbeing, finding new ways to be there for Littles and families when they needed it most.
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Oftentimes when we hear about Black History Month, the first images that pop into our minds are of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, or Barack Obama. While these figures of great change and influence are important to honor and remember during Black History Month, and every month, it is important to honor the Black people making history in big and small ways every day.
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Amanda Gorman inspired the nation when she recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Biden and Harris’ inauguration in January. Inspired by Gorman and NPR’s recent collaborative poem, we wanted to flex our matches’ poetic abilities while also honoring Black History Month. We posed the prompt: ‘what does Black History Month mean to you?’ to our community based matches. They took the challenge and ran with it! We collected poems from Bigs and Littles, and then turned them all into a collaborative poem.
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We had a great group of organizations on the line for our quarterly Youth Coalition Meeting. In the February meeting, we hosted a panel discussion on Social Justice and Youth Activism. Thank you to our incredible panelists for your openness and dedication to the community!
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Like many sisters over the last year, Denise Gonzalez-Mendez and Itzel Rivera have had to visit with each other over Zoom. But before the pandemic, their in-person meetings didn’t take place around the kitchen table. Instead, the two sat around a conference room table at Gonzalez-Mendez’s employer, The Marketing Store, where they met through the mentoring program of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago.
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