Mentorship is one of the most pivotal factors in a young person’s development, according to Artis Stevens.
Stevens is the CEO and president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and spoke to rolling out about why the organization was present at the Super Bowl LVIII.
What has Super Bowl week been like for you and your team?
It’s been exciting.
We’re a longtime partner with the NFL. They’ve been partners with us that help expose more kids to mentorship. So I’m here this week to get things rolling. We have some of our young people here, as well to get these experiences. So anytime they’re excited to get stuff, I’m excited, too.
What have you seen the NFL do firsthand to help out less fortunate communities?
The Social Justice Initiative. It’s called Inspire Change. We are one of the recipients of Inspire Change that the NFL said, “Hey, one of the big things we got to do is invest in communities.”
We invest in communities that create more access to more opportunities, look at education, much more equitable opportunity, economic development and think about youth. One of the things the NFL wants to focus on is mentorship. So Big Brothers Big Sisters, of course, being the leading organization in mentorship in this country say we’re at the table if we wanted to be at the table. A part of the NFL’s commitment has been partnering with us to expose more kids to mentorship opportunities particularly kids who are affected by Justice-impacted programs. So, kids who are affected by the juvenile justice system, or kids who may be having challenges in their life, and they need a love of positive intervention. That’s where Big Brothers Big Sisters come in. That’s why the NFL has been an authentic partner.
Working with us? One of the last things I’ll say to that is all the things we said to the NFL is that we’re not just partners just to be here by name. There needs to be action. So where you go, we need to go as well. That’s part of the reason why we’re hitting the Super Bowl, not to just be here to have fun, we’re here to talk about the issues that are important for young people, and then make sure that their voices are being heard. The NFL responded in kindness and said we’re going to give young people platforms. You can even do that through the entire platform, media and brand that is the NFL itself.
What are some of the glaring issues you see among the youth?
One of the biggest things is attracting more mentors for the young people that we serve. Right now we got 30,000, kids. Most of those kids are boys.
When we sat down with the NFL, we said, “Hey, there are some obvious opportunities here.” One of the biggest opportunities was that the NFL has a huge reach to men, we need to attract more men into the organization. When we got together, we sat down at the table. And we came up with this concept. This concept was this idea called the “Big Draft.”
The concept was when the NFL is drafting their next round of players, they’re helping Big Brothers Big Sisters wrap their next rounds of ventures. This week, we’re launching the Big Draft during the Super Bowl.
It’s going to go all the way up until the draft and we have a huge goal of 10,000 mentors in 60 days. Last year, we had a 6,000 goal, and we exceeded that and hit 8,000. So we’re upping the ante, but we need more people to join us and say, ‘Hey, I want to be a mentor,’ then you’ll join this mission and this work to help young people.
