Love Fort Wayne Podcast
The Love Fort Wayne podcast amplifies the stories of everyday people who are loving and leading in Northeast Indiana to spark imagination, root inspiration, and ignite transformation.
Love Fort Wayne Podcast
Mentoring That Matters: The Far-Reaching Impact of Big Brothers Big Sisters
In this inspiring episode, we sit down with Anne Casteen, Director of Development for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Indiana. Anne shares the heart and mission behind the organization's life-changing mentorship programs and paints a powerful picture of the impact a caring adult can have in the life of a child. From success stories to current needs, we're invited to step into the role of a "Big". Whether you're familiar with Big Brothers Big Sisters or just learning about them for the first time, this conversation will challenge and encourage you to consider how your time, presence, and care can help shape a brighter future for our youth.
We have easily 500 kids waiting to be matched.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the need, the need is big.
Speaker 2:Welcome everybody to the July edition of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. I'm your host, Jeff King, CEO of Love Fort Wayne. My friend Mitch Cruz is off for the episode, but I'm excited to be here with Anne Kasteen from Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Northeast Indiana. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Jeff. Super happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Thank you, jeff, super happy to be here. Yeah, I'm so glad that you're here, man. This is an important conversation because, for me personally, because I love spending time and investing time in the lives of our emerging generation, of our youth, and we're blessed in our community in Northeast Indiana to have Big Brothers, big Sisters, where it's just a vital part of our region, and so the work that you all do is vitally important, and so to have this conversation, I'm excited about it, and I'm also excited to have people learn more about the work that you're doing and how they can get involved and how they can encourage more of the work to be done. Yeah, so let's dive in. Should we so tell us a little bit about yourself and even the journey that led you to your role?
Speaker 1:Okay, great, I actually am a Fort Wayne native. I grew up in the beautiful 05 zip code.
Speaker 1:Went to Bishop Dwanger for high school. I left, went to Purdue for college and then lived in Chicago for a couple of years and then ended up for most of my adult life in Southern California. So I came back to the area because my mom had dementia. I wanted to be a little bit closer to home for family reasons, for work I had always been in sales in the corporate world and did for most of my career I was in the field of child nutrition, school nutrition, which I always felt was kind of mission driven.
Speaker 1:It's such an important area, something I was always really passionate about, you know, feeding kids area, something I was always really passionate about, you know, feeding kids. So when I came back I was able to stay with the same company but I was traveling all the time. So I was in my hometown but really in a new community because Fort Wayne has changed so much and so it was kind of it was two things going on. I wanted to be more connected to my community and I wanted to be doing something for work that was really making a difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so now you serve as director of development, right yeah, with Big Brothers, big Sisters. And so there's folks that maybe have heard the name Big Brothers, big Sisters wherever they're listening, folks that maybe have heard the name Big Brothers, big Sisters wherever they're listening, but they don't know really even the mission or even the work and the impact that you guys are making. Can you share a little bit about the mission of Big Brothers, big Sisters and the work that you do?
Speaker 1:So what we do, our mission statement, is that we foster, create and foster one-to-one mentoring relationships which ignite the power and promise of youth. So we are involved with matching positive adult role models with a child and seeing them through. Our matches used to begin like at the age of seven, and then the match would close when the child turned 18. Now we've seen the benefit and the need to keep those matches open until the little brother or little sister turns 22.
Speaker 1:So it supports them through their post-high school career, and we found that that makes a huge, huge difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how's the response to our community? To? You know, come on board as bigs to littles and I love the point that you hit on, it's beyond even 18, to those early adult years where nurturing is still so vital and important.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure, as you know, fort Wayne is very philanthropic. Everyone is very community minded, so that has been huge. We have two different ways that folks can volunteer to be matched with a child. One is what you think of a traditional community based volunteer, where you are matched with a little brother or sister and you spend time on the weekends doing just anything, just fun things, life lesson things.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of big brothers that teach about, you know, home improvement projects. We have kids that maybe you know, don't know how to go to the supermarket and do their weekly shopping. But we have a lot of organized match activities and we don't really want our big brothers and big sisters to be spending a lot of money. So we have organized match activities, everything from cupcakes and canvas to outdoor activities with our conservation buddies, program sporting events, just really anything you can think of activities in the community. Our other type of volunteer is a school buddy. Think of activities in the community. Our other type of volunteer is a school buddy and those folks are matched with a child between like second and fifth grade and they go and spend time just 30 minutes a week. My school buddy we play Barbies, we do puzzles, we play restaurant and work out maybe some math problems you know I kind of sneak those in there and there's no involvement with the child outside of the school day or the school year. So it's great for folks that are in an office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's right, and want to get out.
Speaker 1:It's a great mental health break.
Speaker 1:And when the child reaches fifth grade we find that a lot of our volunteers are, you know, attached and invested, and so they'll transition to a community-based match there and then keeping the matches open until the kids are 22,.
Speaker 1:We have a program called Big Futures where the kids actually transition to a different caseworker when they hit eighth grade and then we start preparing them for the day after high school graduation. A lot of our community partners, corporate partners, help us with job shadows, and if it's not a job shadow, maybe it's a job tour, because you might have a construction company and you might have a high school student that thinks, oh, all I'm going to do there is maybe swing a hammer. They don't know all the jobs that there are, all the careers that go into running a construction company. So we just try to expose them to companies in the community, to companies in the community. See what's out there. And also a goal of that is to kind of create some brand loyalty that if our littles go off to college outside of Fort Wayne, that they think of Fort Wayne first and bring that knowledge back to Fort Wayne and, you know, build a life here, join the workforce and start a family here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful. There's all these different levels of engagement and investing back into the lives of children and youth and then young adults. You know, from a journey I think about, I get the opportunity at one of our elementary schools to spend some time with a group of like four boys, you know, on Fridays. I've done that for two years now and it just yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, with work that we do, with Love Fort Wayne and Love Our Schools, and just think about that 30-minute investment like you talked about. You know it matters to their lives and then how that can progress into more relationship as they get older and then into those early adult years is so critical, you know. One thought that I had in mind is it seems like the need for that, for any level of investment, for 30 minutes, for extended time, for young adult job shadowing the need for investment seems so big right now. Young adult job shadowing the need for investment seems so big right now. Is that the case? As you guys connect with littles and bigs, Is the need high? And why is that? Why is the need so high, you think?
Speaker 1:Well, I know one thing after the pandemic, our volunteers, they had decreased our number of volunteers had decreased over that time and I think, more than ever, not only our kids in the community but I think our adult volunteers are looking for that connection and I think all of our volunteers would say that they got involved because they wanted to do something positive, to make an impact. To make an impact, I think they would all say universally they have received so much out of their time with their little than they actually gave.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we often speak about on our podcast, especially in the past year, about how isolation, the epidemic of isolation, impacted us all, and so to hear the uniqueness of even adults saying, yeah, I feel a sense of isolation impacted us all, and so to hear the uniqueness of even adults saying, yeah, I feel a sense of isolation, but that fulfillment happened when I was actually able to make a connection with a young person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think everybody got kind of lazy during the you know you got kind of used to just cocooning at home and all your responsibilities you know, kind of faded away and we do feel, we see it that folks are ready to re-engage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful. And you think about the re-engagement that's happening with young people and then what that's doing for them to understand they have a community that wants to connect with them and nurture them so that they don't have to go through an epidemic of isolation in their generation as well. It's beautiful, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we do have kids in the program. You know, of course, a lot of our kids are from single parent homes, but we do have a lot of kids who are in a home with two parents. They might have a lot of siblings, it might be a multi-generational home. They can benefit so much from just that one-on-one time. From just that one-on-one time. You know, we ask our volunteers in the community-based program just to spend two hours twice a month really, which you know that's going out to eat, that's, you know, a really quick. You know it's not a lot of investment, but those four hours a month make a huge difference. And the consistency the fact that an adult says that they are gonna show up and they do consistency, the fact that an adult says that they are going to show up and they do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love that. I want to ask you a question about your leader. I want to ask you about Josette, because for 24 years right, 25. 25 years, 25 years she's been the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters here in Northeast Indiana. I mean, can you just talk about the culture of care that she embodies among you all and how that fosters what we've experienced in our community in regards to the growth and the impact of Big Brothers, big Sisters?
Speaker 1:You know, a servant leader really is. So, you know, I think, commonly used, but she is a true example of a servant leader. The mission is at the heart of everything we do. She models that behavior. I have one example. We were leaving, we had some guests in town and we were leaving to go to lunch and there happened to be a young mother who had lost custody of her babies.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And she had gotten lost on our campus and so she thought she had a court date. And Josette said you know, told everybody to go ahead, and then she went with this young mother, said I'm going to go with you, I'm going to vouch that you were here on time, but your directions were not clear. And, you know, when we saw her a half hour later, she had not only recruited the cousin of this young woman to maybe apply to be a big and then, you know, made sure that this young mother knew that you know she could, you know, call and apply for a position with the agency. So it's a very I think she's got a very holistic approach. She makes sure that not only our littles lives are improved but their families as well.
Speaker 2:I love that, I love that, and then it's a trickle down effect to you all. Right, yeah, what joys do you have in the work that you get to do?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. I always say this is the first job I've ever had, that I cry every week, but they're happy tears. Just the beautiful human beings that we work with, whether it's the kids, the volunteers, the successes that they have, the generosity of people to step up and solve a problem, fill a need it really is incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I think about when we find our passion and we're able to call it our work. That's fulfilling. Yes, you talked about that. Tears of joy. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. You know, you, you all are impacting the lives of so many young people. Like, give folks a snapshot of kind of not only what we did, kind of what a day looks like and what a big to little relationship with us looks like. But how many folks are we talking about that are involved within the work of Big Brothers, big Sisters?
Speaker 2:As far as the agency staff yeah agency staff bigs, littles, how many folks are connected to one another?
Speaker 1:I would say we've got right now about 1,200 active matches.
Speaker 2:So there's 2,400 there.
Speaker 1:We have staff in Fort Wayne, in Noble and DeKalb County, in Kosciuszko County we serve Adams, Whitley, Wells, LaGrange. So we're in 10 counties, so I would say getting close to you know, 2,000 with all the volunteers who help with our events and, you know, participate in our fundraisers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a big number, it's a big number. So 1,200 matches and there's still opportunity for more right.
Speaker 1:We have easily 500 kids waiting to be matched.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the need, the need is big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so talk about the process. What does that look like for someone that's hardest being stirred, even as they're listening? Or maybe they've thought about it for a long time and they say, okay, I can do something about that 500. What does that process look like for them?
Speaker 1:So they would. They can call Big Brothers, big Sisters, they can fill out an application online and our website. Then there is an interview process. The interview, you know, takes somewhere between 90 minutes and, you know, two hours at the very most. If they do fill out their application ahead of time, that shortens, um, the interview process. Um, and we do, you know, of course, a background check. You know, safety is our number one priority, but really the length of the interview, uh, is the only reason that that is there is because we want to match a volunteer with a child. We want to make sure there's compatibility, that they are going to bond and enjoy spending time together, and I always think obviously there's some science that goes into our matching, but there is also a lot of divine intervention.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 1:The matches. It's incredible, the things that they will, things they'll have in common that didn't even you know, come out maybe in the interview process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. So, yeah, I love that, yeah, this. It's funny how that works out, sometimes too, like hearts get intertwined and it's like man. Now we've got this really deep relationship that was meant to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know as I think about meant to be relationships, can you? Can you talk about any success stories again? I often say this I've got my air quotes out for those that are just just listening but, like success stories, what do what do those look like? Do some come to mind where you're just like man? I'm thinking about this big and this little and the impact of their relationship.
Speaker 1:I have two in mind. I have a big brother whose mother recovered from cancer when he was in college, only to be killed in an automobile accident, and he wanted to do something to you know, honor his mother, make a difference. He signed up to be a volunteer, to be a big brother, and he was matched with a little boy 11 years old whose father had passed away, and shortly after they were matched, his mother died. And shortly after they were matched, his mother died. So here was this big brother who happened to be the absolute, perfect person that God put into this little boy's life to guide him through that.
Speaker 1:And now that little boy is, you know, 20 years old, thriving at St Francis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:And then we have a little sister that was in the program who thought she would maybe be able to go to PFW for college. She ended up being a Lilly Scholar.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah.
Speaker 1:Graduated from the University of Notre Dame and she is over in England at Oxford right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool so but that you know that's an example of a village you know her, high school, you know, guidance counselor, you know, helped make sure that she applied for that scholarship and she's a huge success story and beautiful person. We love her, yeah, we love her big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, I love you, you love her big too. Yeah, yeah, I love stories, you know, and because I think sometimes this is Jeff, it's like, okay, the process of connecting a person to a person and we sit down and we, we connect with one another. But when you talk about, hey, we've set up engagements for you and you build relationship, and you just never know what can happen. As we say yes to being in other people's lives, especially via this vehicle of being adults that contribute back to our community by investing in the lives of young people, yeah, and it's funny because I had I'd known Josette and the other folks at the agency for a really long time.
Speaker 1:I'd attended a lot of events over. Yeah, actually join in the agency. But the time was right for me, you know, just last year, and I regret that I didn't do it sooner, because it's so easy and it's absolutely fun. We always say we have a lot of fun, we create a lot of fun. Of course there's life lessons and, you know, mentoring and a lot of guidance that goes with that. But really what holds those matches together is they. They enjoy being together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, you know, I love Fort Wayne. One of our pillars to a transformed community is loving families and you guys are doing that by, you know, investing in children, who are a part of the makeup of a family, and so bravo in the work that you're continuing to do and making a difference here. 1,200 matches is just. Did you say 1,200 or 12? Yeah, 1,200 is just outstanding number, but you're also we're in the summer months and you're in the middle of this 100 day. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker 1:So we are in the middle of our 100-day recruitment campaign. The theme of the campaign is it takes two, so it's two people. It's two hours twice a month. There's two partners in this the parents and the agency and we are hoping to find 500 bigs in 100 days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's doable.
Speaker 1:It's doable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you talked about the philanthropic nature of our community, the big heart of Fort Wayne, to do more, even more together. Especially in this season, there's this raising up of a united movement of people saying we have to make a collective difference and so, yeah, this is a big opportunity for folks to say yes.
Speaker 1:And for our local companies. You know we have companies who have made a commitment to adopt an elementary school that is near their workplace. With our School Buddies program we will match the volunteer to a child in a school. That is just, you know, it could be two minutes, five minutes, you know, less than 10 minutes from where they are at that time during the day. So if it's close to work. So we have companies that you know will say okay, how many volunteers do you need at the school site that's across the street or down the street? So that's fantastic and it's fun for them too, it's fun for the employees because they're all going the same place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, not only individuals and organizations, probably churches. There's lots of different ways that people can get connected.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So how can people do that? What's the next step for them doing that?
Speaker 1:If anybody would be interested in hosting our staff, our recruitment staff, my team, to come in and just share. We're not hard saw just share what the volunteer opportunities are, what the need is. We can do a super tight 10-minute presentation. We usually show a little video that kind of gives them an idea of what a match looks like, and then we'll ask if anybody's interested.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, good yeah.
Speaker 1:And we will. I always say, wherever, whomever you meet with, we would love to come and talk to you. So if it's, you know, a men's group, if it's church group, if you've got a breakfast group, we would love to come and just share the volunteer opportunities, just share our mission and how they can make a difference so easily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good and I want to.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of leaders that listen to our podcast, and so I want to embolden the leaders that are leading in ministry spaces and churches and organizations and in your homes, like this is a great next step for you to take for yourself, a great next step for you to take for your company, your entity, and to make a collective difference in our community.
Speaker 2:Again, we always say, as the church and the community come together to love our city and, specifically, love families, for this discussion, it is going to make a transformational difference. So there's my nudge for you all to get involved and to listen to what Anna has said and, kind of, as we wind down, I want to ask you a personal question, because you hit on it, even a little bit. It was you know, if I could have did it a year before, I would have done it a year before, but I also wanted to work in a place where I was giving back to the community and I was leaning into my passions, like from a leadership perspective. How would you encourage folks to say yes to doing that thing that's on their heart when the door opens for them to do it?
Speaker 1:We always find that our most reluctant volunteers, who think, oh, I'm not special, I don't have any wisdom, I'm not a superstar, I'm not a superhero, we find that those reluctant volunteers end up being our absolute best big brothers and big sisters it's so good. Absolute best big brothers and big sisters, it's so good. So yeah, I would say you know, if you want to learn more, if you want to fill out an application, you know if and if you need to pause that application, say wait, I thought I was ready, but it's just not. You know, can I have a couple months to think about it? You know, we, we work with that all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, I love that. Be, we work with that all the time. Yeah, I love that, I love that. Be encouraged, folks, listen to your heart, go with that passion, even if you have that reluctancy. Take that step of faith and it seems like there's going to be a door that's open for you to make a difference for sure. Definitely, yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate you, anne.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for coming by and talking and sharing a little bit about your story, about the work of Big Brothers, big Sisters, and I'm excited for the impact that's going to happen in celebration of all the work that's been happening in greater Northeast Indiana, to know that we're in 10 counties with Big Brothers, big Sisters, 20,000 folks involved. I mean it's a huge number but, more importantly, huge impact in the lives of so many people. So thank you for sharing.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Folks, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Maybe you were encouraged to take a next step in volunteering and making a difference in the life of a young person in our community, and so she gave you some action steps to take. If you want to ask more questions, you can email us at info at lovefortwaynecom. We'll make sure that we get you connected to Ann and the team. So until we talk to you next time, this has been the Love Fort Wayne podcast. We hope that you're well and we hope to see you next time.
