Big Brothers of Massachusetts Bay (BBMB) and The Boston Scholars Program have entered into a partnership whereby BBMB will provide mentoring to students selected for the merit-based Boston Scholars scholarship award. This new partnership was kicked-off with a cookout on June 6 honoring the award winners and introducing the scholars and their families to the program.John Pearson, President and CEO of Big Brothers of Massachusetts Bay, said that "Educational Advocacy is one of our key initiatives and we are proud to have partnered with the Boston Scholars Program to deliver on this for the ultimate benefit of our Littles. The Boston Scholars Program may be a much younger organization than we are, but we are confident that they are fulfilling a needed mission and expect this partnership to grow in the future."
The Boston Scholars Program is one of the most exciting local non-profits in Boston. What began just a year ago has already conducted outreach with hundreds of students. BSP's mission is to "open doors through educational opportunity". It achieves this mission by granting scholarships to rising high-school students, and matching these "Boston Scholars" with qualified mentors - these mentors will now be matched and managed as part of Big Brothers of Massachusetts Bay new partnership with Boston Scholars.
The Boston Scholars Program was founded by several MBA graduates of the MIT Sloan School of Management. "We felt it was our responsibility as business people to give something back to our community. That was why we founded Boston Scholars," said MBA Rob Higby, co-founder of the Boston Scholars Program. "We felt the partnership with Big Brothers of Massachusetts Bay will complete the mission we envisioned. We deliver on our mission by providing scholarships and mentoring to our award recipients. We were ready to do this mentoring ourselves - but wanted to leave it to the experts so we could focus on our mission of finding qualified students and raising money for their scholarship awards. There is not a more qualified organization than Big Brothers and we know this partnership will deliver the absolute highest value to our Boston Scholars and by extension the Boston community."
John H. Finley, IV, Executive Director of Epiphany School in Dorchester -- where six of this year's Boston Scholars award winners attended -- said "we give our students an excellent foundation before they enter high school, but we know that additional tuition assistance and especially mentoring are essential to ensuring these students are successful and continue onto college. The Boston Scholars Program fills this critical need for our students and we are so excited that they have partnered with Big Brothers who is really the gold standard in mentoring."
