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A charity that finds good-hearted mentors to enhance the lives of 7-14-year-old fatherless boys is realising staff and expansion plans at an accelerated rate, thanks to a new business relationship model. Big Buddy has always received far more requests to find Big Buddies than there are available men. But the agency is planning to close […]

Little Buddy Nicholas Perano and his Big Buddy, Colin Malcolm, haven’t even been matched for a year, but mum Penny Perano says she’s seeing positive, tangible differences in her ten-year-old already. Eleven months ago, the first Hamilton Buddy pair began spending Sunday mornings together. Colin says they’ve been doing anything from finding a quiet corner

A national organisation that finds mentors for fatherless boys says that after 20 years in the business, they’re still looking for men with a kind heart rather than a saintly disposition. The message is vital for an increasingly busy Big Buddy, a charity that has just added a Hamilton post to its Auckland and Wellington

August 2017 In 2002, disillusioned after many years in management and corporate IT, Richard Aston jumped ship at 50 to take up the reins of a fledgling social agency with the lofty vision of changing fatherless boys’ lives. Back then, Big Buddy was a paper-based social agency with five matches on its books. But Aston

July 2017 When boys’ mentoring charity Big Buddy talks about finding positive male role models for fatherless 7 to 14-year-olds, they’re not asking for saints or sports stars to put their hands up. Although, anyone watching some of the Gallagher Chief’s best-known rugby players and five ‘Little Buddies’ at a training session last week would

From time to time, we share letters with you that have great meaning straight from the source, In this case, it’s an update from a very grateful Little Buddy mother. ” River has just got back from his three-month exchange in Germany and will be seeing Trevor over the weekend. They’ve been hanging out every single weekend

As mentors help their Little Buddies grow into young men, it’s not surprising that they sometimes surprise their mentors with the lessons they’ve been quietly absorbing. Big Buddy Richard Stoks  recounts once such example a couple of years ago. “After 4 years of insisting he’d beat me one day, and after a momentary lapse of

As a charity for fatherless boys, we receive all kinds of help from the community. Here’s a great example of crowd-funding from a couple of years back, a method of fundraising that we’re always thrilled to hear about. Jamie Bryant has grown up with the Big Buddy mentoring ethos in his blood. He’s the son

Last week our Wellington coordinator, Dave Burcher joined a group of Wellington mentors at the annual Fathers’ Breakfast, hosted by The Parenting Place at Wellington’s Shed 5 on Queen’s Wharf. Speakers included Michael Jones (ex All Black Legend), Andrew Becroft (pictured, Children’s Commissioner), Christopher Luxon (Chief Executive Officer of Air NZ), Greg Flemming (CEO The

This week All Black great, Grant Fox, is featured in the latest Woman’s Weekly. He’s talking about his support for Big Buddy and the important things his father taught him. “Dad gave us the opportunity to try things,” he says. “Often he’d let us try to figure things out for ourselves and be quite happy for