The organization was founded in 1912[2] by Mrs. Sidney C. (Madeleine) Borg, who was a volunteer in Children's Court.
She lamented the lack of qualified staff to deal with growing numbers of girls she found in court, and established the organization with the initial recruitment of six volunteers to help deal with individual cases.
[3] The work of the Jewish Big Sisters involved visits to the home of the individual "little sister" in cooperation with the central office in order to work on specific cases.
[1] A professional would make preliminary visits and at the appropriate time, a big sister would be assigned to the individual.
She also noted that, when she first started, children were classified as either "good" or "bad" but that now they were called "sick."