The Client

St. Louis-based Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri (BBBSEMO) serves a wide variety of children and families facing various levels of adversity. BBBSEMO builds trusting relationships that encourage and support young people in those families. There are also an estimated 100,000 children in Eastern Missouri who are in serious need of a Big Brother or Big Sister.

The Challenges

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri uses an early-warning system called "ABCToday!" to track attendance, behavior and classroom success to identify students who may need special mentoring. The technology behind the system is an application called “ABC Intelligence Tool”. However, BBBSEMO needed to overhaul the application to optimize the results of the system.

The Solutions

Roundedcube collaborated with BBBSEMO to design and develop the custom ASP.NET web app (ABC Intelligence Tool 2.0) that is compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The app integrates disparate data from Eastern Missouri school districts and provides data visualization to allow BBBSEMO to evaluate their “Littles”. The new app also required high attention on security settings to comply with the various roles necessary for schools, volunteers, “Bigs” and coordinators to all work together while protecting data access.

The Results

The ABCToday! system has streamlined their evaluation process and strengthened their partnership with Eastern Missouri school districts. Ultimately, the organization has new capabilities to gather a better understanding of their Littles’ school life which can provide insight into what is going on at home in order to accommodate their BBBS program.

Representatives from the White House, U.S. Department of Education, and the Corporation for National and Community Service gathered in Washington, D.C., to announce the winners in the Together for Tomorrow School Improvement Challenge. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri (BBBSEMO) and its ABCToday! early warning and recognition system was named a winner.

In February 2013, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri’s CEO, Becky James-Hatter, was honored by The White House as a Champion of Change for African American Education. We send our congratulations to Becky and BBBSEMO. We hope the ABCToday! Program continues to help drive academic success.