Big Brothers Big Sisters Gains Ancestry.com Support

NOTE from DearMYRTLE: The following is a most interesting use of resources offered by Ancestry.com, honoring also Blair Underwood's interest in Big Brothers Big Sisters. While I don't like Ancestry.com's term "high-profile celebrity customer", this is a good cause. "Customer" just sounds so overly commercial in the worlds of genealogy and social causes.

Ancestry.com Teams Up with Actor Blair Underwood

to Support Big Brothers Big Sisters

Philadelphia, PA (February 24, 2012) -- Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, has teamed up with one of its high-profile celebrity customers to support a national non-profit organization that helps youth overcome what are too often generational cycles of adversity.

Actor Blair Underwood will appear in a commercial promoting Ancestry.com’s support of Big Brothers Big Sisters, the nation’s largest mentoring network, proven to help children overcome adversity to achieve in school and succeed in life.

In the commercial, scheduled to air February 24, Underwood says discovering his family history on Ancestry.com gave him a greater understanding of himself.  He goes onto say that while it’s incredible to know where you came from, it’s also important to know where you are going.

“That’s why I’m joining with Ancestry.com to support Big Brothers Big Sisters, an organization that helps kids reach their full potential,” states Underwood.

Big Brothers Big Sisters provides one-to-one mentoring services to children of single, low-income or incarcerated parents as well as sons and daughters of military personnel or those who face other forms of adversity.  The new TV commercial airs February 24 on the heels of the announcement of the Big Brothers Big Sisters 2011 Youth Outcomes Survey Report, which shows statistically significant improvements for youth throughout the first year of enrollment.  The improvements are in three areas – educational success, avoidance of risky behaviors and socio-emotional competency, measures that researchers link to long-term outcomes, such as high school graduation, avoidance of juvenile delinquency, and college or job readiness.

Ancestry.com has worked with Underwood on a network TV show that airs on Friday nights. The company provided important family history research for the show, including tracing the roots of the featured celebrities including Underwood. Each episode takes one celebrity on an emotional, and often times soul-searching journey to discover the lives of family members who came before them.

Ancestry.com is donating 20 percent of proceeds of all new subscriptions donated through www.ancestry.com/donate from February 24-29, 2012 to Big Brothers Big Sisters.  Funding is used by Big Brothers Big Sisters to carefully screen volunteer mentors and match them with youth in long-term, staff monitored and supported friendships.

To view the commercial and to support Big Brothers Big Sisters, visit www.ancestry.com/donate.

About Big Brothers Big Sisters

Big Brothers Big Sisters, the nation’s largest donor and volunteer supported mentoring network, holds itself accountable for children in its program to achieve measurable outcomes, such as educational success; avoidance risky behaviors; and higher aspirations, greater confidence and better relationships.  Partnering with parents/guardians, schools, corporations and others in the community, Big Brothers Big Sisters carefully pairs children (“Littles”) with screened volunteer mentors (“Bigs”) and monitors and supports these one-to-one mentoring matches throughout their course.  The first-ever Big Brothers Big Sisters Youth Outcomes Summary, released in 2012, substantiates that its mentoring programs have proven, positive academic, socio-emotional and behavioral outcomes for youth, areas linked to high school graduation, avoidance of juvenile delinquency and college or job readiness.

Big Brothers Big Sisters provides children facing adversity, often those of single or low-income households or families where a parent is incarcerated or serving in the military, with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one mentoring relationships that change their lives for the better, forever.  This mission has been the cornerstone of the organization’s 100-year history.  With about 360 agencies across the country, Big Brothers Big Sisters serves nearly 630,000 children, volunteers and families. Learn how you can positively impact a child’s life, donate or volunteer at BigBrothersBigSisters.org.

About Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with more than 1.7 million paying subscribers. More than 8 billion records have been added to the site in the past 15 years. Ancestry users have created more than 31 million family trees containing over 4 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site www.ancestry.com, Ancestry.com offers several localized Web sites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.