Big Brothers Big Sisters of West Central Illinois is prepping for their biggest fundraiser of the year, coming up next month.
Bowl for Kids’ Sake is a long-standing fundraising event through the local Big Brothers Big Sisters agency over the past several decades.
Ryan Flynn and Cindy Denby with Big Brothers Big Sisters of West Central Illinois joined WLDS’ “What’s On Your Mind?” program yesterday. Flynn says Bowl for Kids’ Sake is a great way for the community to get involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters.
“We’ve been doing this for nearly thirty years, and what it does is it allows us to connect with the community. We connect with businesses and individuals in the community and then they bring uut bowling teams. We set aside two nights on a Friday and Saturday and bowling teams and pick their times. The we take the money and we put it right back into our mentoring programs,” says Flynn.
Denby explains how the agency’s mentoring programs help young kids throughout the area.
“We do one-on-one mentoring, we change the lives of children ages five to fourteen. It gives us the opportunity to enhance their lives, to give them someone in their life that is going to mentor them in all different kinds of areas. It could be helping them with their school work, it could be gardening, it could be sports for the first time. Our mission is to make sure that all children have the ability to achieve success in life,” says Denby.
Over the years, Flynn says some of the biggest contributors to Big Brothers Big Sisters have been Illinois College and MacMurray College.
“Both colleges are very good at getting involved with the community. We have fifty-one kids on our waiting list, and one of the things that’s been really awesome over the past few months has been MacMurray’s involvement. Through the help of their soccer coach, they’ve been very active, their soccer team has been at a lot of our programs, they’ll be at Bowl for Kids’ Sake. The great thing about our community is, whenever you say you have a need, you know you’ll have people standing in line ready to help. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Illinois College or MacMurray, everyone’s ready to help,” says Flynn.
This year’s Bowl for Kids’ Sake for Cass and Morgan Counties will take place April 7th and 8th at the Bowl Inn, located at 224 North East Street in Jacksonville. To find out how to register, click here.