When Jamill Robbins was seven, his mom signed him up to be a Little Brother. He was paired with Norman Izard, who had just moved back to Buffalo and wanted to give back.
“I come from a big family and don’t have kids of my own, so I became a Big Brother nine years ago,” Izard said. “It’s something I’ve talked about for years. I moved away for a while and made excuses why I wasn’t doing it, and I came back home, and I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to do it.’”
Their first outing was lunch at 716, and Robbins remembers being “a little nervous” at the start. “It was my first time out, but I felt like it was a big bond between us when we met,” he said.
Since then, the pair has shared everything from Bills games to car shows and the county fair.
“All the stuff I never did, or the experiences like we went to a couple of Bills games, I never went to before, or we went to car shows, and the fair, and stuff,” Robbins said. This summer, Izard added, “we’re going to try fishing. We’ve never gone fishing.”
The relationship has become about life guidance as much as fun.
“We talk about, ‘Hey, what did you do at school this week? Or, ‘What do you got going on this summer?’ He’s looking for a job right now, so I’m kind of giving advice on that kind of thing,” Izard said. “But we’re trying to get him prepared for his next steps, right?”
“Yeah,” Robbins replied.
“And, you know, I’m just hoping to give him the nudge,” Izard said.
Big Brothers Big Sisters stresses that becoming a mentor doesn’t require a huge time commitment — just two or three activities a month.
Watch the story below:
