THE BIRTH OF A MISSION
In 50 years, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Lehigh Valley has flourished from the Allentown Kiwanis Club’s idea to begin a “Big Brothers” agency to the premier mentoring organization throughout our area, serving over 400 children annually. Grown with $3,000 in seed money from the Kiwanis Club in early 1971, the organization received its charter from the national Big Brothers agency and added its first member to its Board of Directors – Dr. John Shuman – by the summer of that year. The goal, in part, from the organization’s first mission statement: to “organize, in the County of Lehigh, Pennsylvania, under professional direction, a body of mature and responsible men to interest themselves individually in the welfare and improvement of boys.”
The agency, from its inception, grew at a rapid pace – by 1972, it had hired its first executive director, Lester F. Lawrence, and boasted a 27-member Board of Directors, which included many pillars of the 1970s-Lehigh County community. The following year, Big Brothers of Lehigh County served 75 matches and absorbed a mentoring program run by PP&L (now PPL Corporation) in the City of Allentown. By 1979, the organization had hired its first female executive director, Linda L. Stalford, and made the important decision to recruit girls for the program throughout our area.
Within a decade of its first existence, the agency was renamed Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Lehigh County and was serving over 115 matches throughout the County. A merger with a similar mentoring organization in Northampton County in the mid-1980s created the organization as its now known today – Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Lehigh Valley.