Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island hosted two international leaders from the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program in Macedonia on June 21 and 22. Vera Dimitrievska and Dr. Aspazija Sofijanova Spasovsky were in Levittown and the Hamptons as part of Big Brothers Big Sisters International's Institute on Sustainability held in Washington, DC last week.

Bill Tymann, executive director of Long Island Big Brothers Big Sisters, was enthusiastic about hosting the Macedonian leaders. "We wanted to make them feel welcome and showed them how our Big Brothers Big Sister volunteers make a difference in the lives of Long Island children," he recalled.

The Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program in Macedonia, which began in 1997, is one of 11 countries formerly under communist rule that has developed the concept during the recent years since independence.

The program has brought organized volunteerism as an opportunity to Macedonians that was not available to them during soviet times. The BBBS program is offering opportunities to children that have been unavailable during hard economic years as the former communist republic of Yugoslavia scrambled to create a new economic system.

While in the United States, the focus on their visit to their sister Long Island Big Brothers Big Sisters agency was on how to raise money, how to engage community and corporate leaders to serve on a board of directors; and how to recruit men to be Big Brother volunteers.

Many of these issues are of the same concern in most BBBS agencies across the United States. But, the historic tradition and experience to make a financial contribution and to volunteer one's time is much greater in this country. The concept of volunteering in Europe is still a new one.

Following their visit on Long Island, Dimitrievska and Spasovsky visited their embassy in Washington to talk with their ambassador. Their mission was to inform him of the value of the BBBS program in strengthening their society's treatment and support of children and helping them to develop a greater sense of their own future.

Tymann said that their visit included meeting a Big Brother volunteer matched to a child in the program that gave them the opportunity to ask questions about their relationship. Tymann also introduced them to the agency's staff, case managers and members of the board of directors whose enthusiasm and commitment to the program were contagious. Their stay included a visit to the BBBS Donation Center that raises funds for the agency. "We wanted them to get an idea how we do things so that they can take some of our ideas on funding, recruiting and case work back to Macedonia and make them work there," he said.

Vera Dimitrievska is program coordinator of the Open Society Institute based in the modern Macedonia capital of Skopje. The Open Society Institute, with support from its namesake in New York, helps fund the BBBS agency in Macedonia.

Dr. Aspazija Sofijonova Spasovsky is program coordinator of the agency. A medical doctor in the premature babies section of Skopje Hospital, she has been with the program since 1997 and was trained to work with other mentoring staff and volunteers at an international session in Budapest last year. She is familiar with the United States; as the daughter of a doctor she attended high school in Washington, DC.

The Macedonian agency has a significant number of matches and wants to create more matches among thr Ethnic Albanian population in Skopje and among the Romny (Gypsies.)

The Long Island Big Brothers Big Sisters agency matches at-risk children from single-parent homes to caring adult volunteers in a one-to-one mentoring relationship.

For more information about Big Brothers Big Sisters, call 731-7880 or visit their website at www.bbbsli.org.