Meet a Match: Margie & Matthew

 Margie & Matthew 

Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Durham’s (BBBSND) Executive Director, Margaret (Margie) Ayres, took on the responsibility of being a mentor to Matthew in March 2013. “I wanted a better understanding of how the programs benefited the children and ultimately, I wanted to be a mentor for the same reason as everyone else: I wanted to support a child in our community” says Margie. 

Margie and Matthew started out in the In-School Mentoring (ISM) program in the last few months of Matthew’s grade 6 year. During their time together, they’ve done a bunch of different activities including cooking pizzas and baking cookies, painting bird houses for Father’s Day, playing hangman and Dogopoly, playing basketball, and sometimes just sitting and chatting. Margie’s favourite pastime in their match is when Matthew is putting together a Lego sculpture “he’s so good at it, reading all the instructions carefully, and patient with it, too, unlike me” says Margie. Margie thinks Matthews favourite thing to do is play Dogopoly “because he always wins and takes all my Monopoly money” Margie jokes.

Margie says she likes spending time with Matthew because he’s very appreciative of her coming every week and he’s always so polite. “He’s also got quite the sense of humour, he’s quite sarcastic, but always making me laugh,” says Margie. Margie explains that Matthew’s dad is also very kind to her “Every time I call Matthew’s dad, he’s always very thankful for me hanging out with Matthew, and so that’s really nice to hear.”

In July of 2015, Margie and Matthew semi-transitioned to the Traditional Program, meaning that she mainly sees him once a week in the school, but she can see him in the summer outside of school. Their first Traditional outing was to Joyride 150 on Matthew’s birthday! Margie brought her son and a couple of his friends to ride around with Matthew. Margie said they rode their bikes around for 7 hours and they all loved it! Margie plans on bringing Matthew along to a lot of BBBSND events so that he can see what it means to give back to the community.

When asked about what kind of relationship she thinks they have, Margie said that they are friends. She has fun with him and can count on him, and vice versa. “I think he really enjoys it when I come see him. He always wants me to stay longer than the 1 hour I’m supposed to stay,” says Margie.  

Even though Matthew has recently been matched with a Big Brother who has more time to spend with him outside of school, Margie and Matthew are going to continue seeing each other in school, as well as occasionally outside of school.

If you're interested in learning more information about our mentoring programs, please call Cheryl Holmes at 905-985-3733 ext 2.    

Photos were taken by the amazing Daniel Cullen.