The Need for Mentoring in the Bay Area
BBBSBA Works – The Bottom Line

 

As the Bay Area better serves its children, it will better serve itself:  We can put the poor into the ghetto, but we can not lock the effects of poverty away.

• 36,339 Bay Area kids will require a stay at a drug rehabilitation facility this year, at a cost of $139 million ($3,840 per child).
• Bay Area teens who drink and drive will cause 68 serious injury accidents this year costing over $36 million ($533,000 each accident).
• 5,700 kids are incarcerated in the California Youth Authority at a cost of $80,000 per year for each child.

By contrast, the cost of mentoring a child for one year through Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area is $2,500. The cost goes down over time, so that a three year match – the average length – costs just under $5,000.

 

Since children in our programs are significantly less likely to use drugs, alcohol, or violence to solve problems, and significantly more likely to graduate high school, the total savings to the Bay Area – the total return on an investment in kids through mentoring – is enormous.

One study, conducted in Washington State, estimates that each child in a Big Brothers Big Sisters program saves society $4,000 per year.

 

1. Introduction
2. The Epidemic
3. Reasons of Poverty
4. Reasons of Poverty continued
5. Social Disconnect
6. Social Disconnect continued
7. Social Disconnect continued
8. Mentoring is the Answer
9. Mentoring is the Answer continued
10. BBBSBA Works on the Bottom Line
11. Final Thoughts