Turn the Town Teal for BBBS Oxford

Friday, 18 August 2023 06:12

Local businesses can now sign up to receive a starter kit so they can Turn the Town Teal next month.

OXFORD COUNTY - Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oxford County would like to Turn the Town Teal.

September is Big Brothers Big Sisters Month, so the organization would like local businesses to decorate their offices in teal in order to shine a light on youth mentorship programs.

Businesses can fill out a form online to receive a starter kit which includes some teal decor along with some information posters and pamphlets about Big Brothers Big Sisters. However, Manager of Communications Liz Wismer-Van Meer is encouraging everyone to think outside the starter kit box.

"We're encouraging them to build on that of what we have for the starter kit and decorate your office space or storefront in teal so we can bring that colour forward so people can think of Big Brothers Big Sisters and think about mentorship when they see those teal colours around Oxford County."

Teal is the colour that's featured in the Big Brothers Big Sisters logo that was first unveiled in 2019.

Wismer-Van Meer says they ran a similar campaign back in 2018, when the colour purple was featured in their old logo.

"For offices that maybe don't have a lot of people that are coming and going, they would decorate their lunch rooms while some of them would decorate their waiting rooms. We also had some stores that decorated their window displays with some purple. They had it inside their stores with maybe one area decorated in the purple with our information displayed."

Wismer-Van Meer says BBBS Oxford is hoping to recruit 50 new mentors in September 2023.

"We've seen an increase of over 200 percent in enrollment applications for young people but unfortunately we're not seeing that number in volunteers. We have a lot of young people that are coming into our programs that are going on our wait list whether it is one-to-one matches, group mentorship programs, in-school mentoring, or literacy mentoring."

You can find more information about Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oxford County and their youth mentorship programs online here.