Big Brothers, Big Sisters: 20 years of helping kids in Cape Girardeau County

I began my travels to Cape Girardeau in 1999, the year Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri (BBBSEMO) started serving the young people and families of Cape Girardeau County. Since then, we have matched thousands of Cape youth in high-quality, one-to-one mentoring relationships. We have also expanded our services to support "alumni Littles" through age 25, positioning them to secure living wage work; created ABCToday, a nationally-recognized early warning system dedicated to improving student attendance, behavior, and course performance; launched the Amachi Missouri program serving children of incarcerated families; and built enduring partnerships with United Way of Southeast Missouri, Southeast Missouri State University, La Croix Church, One City, and many civic-minded businesses like our first ABCToday partner, Bank of Missouri.

This September, Big Brothers Big Sisters will enter its third decade in Cape. All those years of meeting, talking and working with community leaders and now long-time friends have shown us a community that is vibrant, sophisticated, caring, diverse and entrepreneurial. There is so much about Cape Girardeau to celebrate and elevate!

For today, I want to focus on -- and give sincerest thanks to -- Cape Girardeau Public Schools.

In 2005, CGPS joined a conversation with us to determine how we could better support children and families, and achieve greater student outcomes. In 2013, Jefferson Elementary School became the first ABCToday School in the state. The initiative now encompasses 19 schools throughout our region, where tracking data and responding through strong community partnerships is impacting 7,500 youth in Eastern Missouri.

No school district in eastern Missouri has done more for young people, in partnership with our agency, than Cape Girardeau Public Schools. Just as businesses have grown and helped reinvigorate once-neglected parts of town, CGPS has been experiencing and advocating for similar growth and revitalization. Cape Girardeau, you have so much to be proud of! But, of course, much remains to be done, especially for those in greatest need.

As I peer into the next 20 years, I humbly suggest that, together, we lead with four anchors in mind:

1. Set aside organization- and institution building and think about community capacity building.

2. Remember that the young people who need us most also need us -- the adults -- to re-think and re-imagine. Change is pain, and pain is the fertilizer for human growth.

3. Get close. None of us can address problems we don't fully understand.

4. Remember, above all, that all of our children are all our children.

Cape Girardeau, thank you for welcoming us all those years ago. We are looking forward and ahead -- with you.

Rebecca (Becky) J. Hatter is president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri.