There’s a sibling boom in Jefferson County.

In the past three years, the county’s Big Brothers-Big Sisters program has grown from serving about a dozen children to serving more than 200.

Much of the credit for the growth goes to teenage mentors such as Jennifer Sutton, who will be a senior at Oskaloosa High School and who volunteers with elementary-aged students.

“They run up and give me hugs, and I love that because they can trust me,” Sutton said. “It’s just a good feeling to see them improve.”

What’s happening in Jefferson County is noteworthy in part because it’s a rural area, said W. Todd Moore, director of rural development for Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Topeka, which serves Jefferson County and other outlying areas.

The agency’s main purpose is to match children from single-family homes with adult mentors, but that’s tough in rural areas for two reasons, Moore said.

First, most adults who live in rural areas work somewhere else. That’s true in Jefferson County, where 67 percent of adults work outside the county, according to Moore’s figures.

Second, even if a program starts up in a rural area, it usually serves only the town where the program is based and not the outlying areas, Moore said.

Danielle Hernandez, 7, left, and Jordan Brown, 9, hang around on some outdoor equipment during a Big Brothers-Big Sisters Day program at Oskaloosa Elementary School. Big Brothers-Big Sisters has a highly successful program in Jefferson County, where elementary students are paired with middle school and high school mentors.

That would be great for Oskaloosa, but not for Ozawkie.

To overcome these problems in Jefferson County, Moore turned to the schools.

Instead of trying to make traditional Big Brothers-Big Sisters “matches” — which involve pairing a child with an adult — Moore decided to focus on pairing elementary school students with middle school and high school students.

The first year, 30 young children countywide were paired with an older student. In the school year that just ended, that number had grown to 211.

Today, the McLouth, Oskaloosa, Valley Falls and Jefferson West school districts all have active programs.

Moore said that surveys in Oskaloosa of parents, mentors and teachers had shown that 80 percent of children who participated in the program had improved self-confidence, and 65 percent had a better attitude toward school.

At Oskaloosa High School, students meet with their “Littles” every other week during a 20-minute activity period. They do crafts, play games and sometimes “just run around and be stupid” together, Sutton said.

“I like knowing that I’m helping them out,” Sutton said.

Each site in Jefferson County has a coordinator who supervises the children and helps identify students who could use a mentor.

At Oskaloosa High, that person is Darla Heard, who earns a stipend from Big Brothers-Big Sisters in addition to working in the school system as a computer coordinator.

Heard said the benefits from the program extended into the community. When the older students are in public, they’re more likely to act responsibly because they know they might encounter their “Littles,” she said.

The “Littles,” in turn, get a self-esteem boost from knowing they have an older friend in town, she said.

“You should see their faces light up when they see their ‘Bigs’ at a football game,” Heard said.