Celebrate and support mentoring - National Mentoring Month

It's National Mentoring Month, when mentoring in all its different formats is celebrated across the world. I led two different volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago between 1975 and 2011 and that's what motivates me daily to try to raise visibility and draw operating resources to all of the youth serving programs operating in Chicago and other cities.

The graphic below shows a range of young people and volunteers who were involved in these programs. In the lower right corner is a photo of me with Leo Hall, who was in 4th grade when we were first introduced in 1973. We're still connected on Facebook and Instagram. 
 

Every January since the early 2000s I've written an article that highlights National Mentoring Month. I sent my January newsletter out this week and included links to Mentoring Month resources.  You can read the newsletter here.

Last January I wrote this article, showing the Mentoring Stamp released by the US Postal Service in 2001, and introduced at our spring Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. 

It's one of many articles where I use graphics like the one below to focus on the research needed to segment our understanding of all the different groups of people being served by various types of organized and informal mentoring.

During 2024 I shared several articles with maps like the one below that show areas where persistent poverty is concentrated in the USA.  These are places where organized, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are most needed. 

As you celebrate mentoring this month, and hopefully throughout the year, I encourage you to use the graphic shown below as a reminder of your ability to draw people from your network to my library of programs and to the websites of individual Chicago area tutor and/or mentor programs. Use the information to build your understanding of the work being done and of ways you can use your own time, talent and dollars to help.

You can create your own versions of this graphic, showing your city instead of Chicago, and pointing to lists of youth programs in your city, if someone is collecting and sharing that information.  If no one is doing this, share my articles with people at your local college and university, and with wealthy alumni. Encourage them to fund a multi-year Tutor/Mentor Connection type research and action program that involves students, faculty, alumni and the local community.  View these articles to see what's possible.

Thank you for reading.  I hope you'll connect with me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and Mastodon. See links on this page.

I also invite you to make a contribution to help me pay the bills in 2025 and continue sharing this information. Visit this page. 

Inequality. So much data. So little change.

In December I received the Chicago Community Area Hardship Index (2019-2023) from the UIC Great Cities Index. 

The introduction says  "The Chicago Community Area Hardship Index combines values from six indicators of socioeconomic hardship to quantify and visualize the significant variations in socioeconomic status across Chicago. This story map will present hardship index values at the community area level calculated using socioeconomic data from the 2019-2023 American Community Survey (ACS)."

View the report and maps at this link. The map shows areas of greatest hardship on the West and South parts of Chicago.    

This was last published as a 2016-2020 report which I shared in an article on the Mapping for Justice blog. You can see that most of the same areas are highlighted.

I've been using maps to focus attention, and resources, on high poverty areas of Chicago since 1993 in an on-going effort to help long-term, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs reach more K-12 youth in these areas.  

One story that motivated me was this from the Chicago Tribune, in 1994, which also shows the West and South parts of Chicago as areas of high poverty where kids are most at risk. 

I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 as an information-based public education effort, intended to build a better understanding of what volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs were in Chicago and help draw needed operating resources and volunteers to all of them.  Since 2011 I've led this through Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

We published our first Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs Directory in 1994 and updated it every year through 2003, when we launched an on-line portal to help people find programs and know where more are needed.

You can see that the map on the front cover of the Directory shows the same areas of Chicago as the 2024 UIC maps.  Not much has changed.

In April 2015, almost 10 years ago, I included this graphic in an article titled "After the Riots, Do the Planning."  

This shows an August 1993 Chicago SunTimes story, which leads off with a statement saying "Chicago neighborhoods that were poor 20 years ago are even more entrenched in poverty today because the city lacks a comprehensive battle plan".

It highlights the same areas of Chicago as were highlighted in the UIC report.

In this article I show the "Master Plan" that the Tutor/Mentor Connection created and presented to leaders at the 1997 Presidents' Summit for America's Future, held in Philadelphia. 

This article is one of several in this section of the Tutor/Mentor blog where I describe the planning process, commitment, and leadership, that has been needed for so many years. 

Since launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection the goal has been that others would use the information in the library to deepen their understanding of problems associated with poverty and inequality and solutions being applied in some parts of the world that could be applied in Chicago neighborhoods.

There are several hundred articles on this blog, and the Mapping for Justice blog, with maps that you can use in your planning and resource allocation.  You just need to spend time looking at them.

Below is Page 2 from the 2000 February-March issue of the printed newsletter that I mailed to about 10,000 people.  It describes a community-building process, where groups of people read the information I've been sharing, and use it in their own planning.  

As we enter 2025 I repeat my invitation for big and small groups of people to dig into my archives, my past articles, and the ideas I share and start a conversation with people in your network to better understand the information and find ways to apply the ideas.

Read these articles about having universities create on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection study/research/action programs where students spend four to six years digging into my archives and the rest of their lives applying the ideas and generating new information that others learn from.   

"It just takes two or three people on a campus to launch a Tutor/Mentor Connection."  Or one wealthy donor.

I've been repeating this "call to involvement" every year since 1975 when I began leading the volunteer-based tutor/mentor program at Montgomery Ward.  I hope you'll accept the invitation and begin to add your own voice.

I encourage you to connect with me on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter and that you'll read my posts and share them with your network.

At the right is an example of what you could also be doing. Paul Signorelli, who I met on Twitter through the 2013 #ETMOOC, saw my National Mentoring Month post and shared it on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook, with  his own endorsement and encouragement.

As I said above, my 2000 newsletter only went to 10,000 people and many of those probably did not read it.  Too few ever saw these ideas. You can change that by sharing my posts, just as Paul and others have been doing. 

Thanks for reading. I look forward to connecting with you and your ideas in 2025.  

I want to thank those who sent contributions during 2024 to support my work.  I hope you'll give again in 2025 (even if you were not able to give in 2024). 

View my Support Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC page. Click here.

I cannot keep doing this without your help. 

Into the new year

America lost a hero this week with the death of former president Jimmy Carter. 

I heard President Carter speak in June 2008 when I attended the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service in Atlanta.  His purpose, and the purpose of The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation (JRCPF), was (and still is) to encourage the growth of campus-community partnerships and student-led community service learning.  

I wrote two blog articles in 2008 in the weeks after hearing Jimmy Carter and I've mixed them together in the message I'm sharing today.

President Carter talked about the gaps between rich and poor, and then demonstrated what he is doing to close this gap by providing awards to three university-community engagement projects.  

He said "the greatest challenge we face is the gap between rich and poor." And, "We have the best institutions of higher education in the world, yet many are surrounded by slums."

I created the graphic below as I attended workshops focused on business and university engagement. It includes a map of the Chicago region, showing areas where poverty is concentrated and were youth, families and schools need more help.

In 2008 I'd already spent 14 years trying to reverse the traditional two-way process of how nonprofits obtain resources from people who already have a self interest in wanting these nonprofits to be successful in their missions. We'll never have great social benefit programs in a majority of the places where they are needed based on the current system of competitive allocation.

Yet, if we can engage the talent of volunteers and leaders to serve in intermediary roles, we can do more to connect people who can help with places where help is needed.

I put these and similar charts on the T/MC web site with a goal that they are used by groups of people in universities, churches, businesses, etc. who want to become more strategic, and more engaged, in the ways they use their talent, time and resources to help end poverty in Chicago, and other cities around the world.    

I wrote a second article after hearing President Jimmy Carter say "We have some of the best institutions of higher education in the world. Yet many of them are surrounded by slums."

I included this map showing locations of colleges and universities in the Chicago region,  with overlays showing where poverty was most concentrated and where poorly performing schools (based on 2007 Illinois State Board of Education) were located.

Its aim is to help students, faculty and alumni from each university create tutor/mentor support groups that adopt the mission and strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (led by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011) in their own efforts to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in the areas around the college or university.

Thus, if you're at Northwestern, or Loyola, you could have a great impact on the growth of programs in the North part of Chicago and in Evanston. While if you're at the University of Chicago, you could have an impact in helping tutor/mentor programs grow throughout the South Side where our maps show so much poverty and too few tutor/mentor programs.

If you're at Dominican University in Oak Park, you could be supporting programs in Austin and on the West side of Chicago. If you're at the University of Illinois at Chicago, you could also be supporting the entire West side. And, if you're a downtown campus, with students and alumni living in all parts of the region, you could use these maps, to develop engagement strategies throughout the region, using the expressways as routes to connect with programs in different neighborhoods.

You could have a page on your website showing how your students were collecting and sharing information about what tutor/mentor programs in your part of the city were doing, and what universities in other parts of Chicago, and in other cities, were doing to help youth in high poverty areas of their cities. You could even be hosting conferences and online forums to share this information. View this intern blog to see examples of what's possible. 

As you look at these maps, use the Zip Code Map and Chicago Programs Links, to find contact information for organizations that provide various forms of volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring. You can narrow your search by type of program and age group served by using the Program Locator database (which was built in 2004, but is now only available as an archive).

You'll find that some programs are very well organized. Some are small, and may not be so well organized. Some places just offer homework help. Some offer a rich learning environment and connect youth to a wide network of adults and opportunities.

However, the goal is not to pick and choose between different levels of program quality. It's to help develop great volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and extended learning programs in every zip code with high poverty. That may mean helping a small program grow. It also means helping the best programs continue to sustain their work.

It means we need to build a distribution of manpower, talent, operating dollars and technology into every poverty neighborhood, not just a few with high profile leaders.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection was created in 1993 and has been led by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011. It's aim is to share information so that teams in universities begin to develop their own ideal of what mix of services and what type of program structure is best, and that they begin to take on a responsibility for helping such programs grow in the area around the university, with a goal that elementary school kids they work with today can be college freshmen in 6 to 12 years, and college alumni who support the university, and its neighborhood tutor/mentor programs, 15 to 20 years from now.

Read this "Tipping  Point" article to see a description of this vision. click here

The result of such leadership can be that instead of wealthy alumni donating $20 million for research at an area university, these same alumni might begin to divide that money into annual grants of $40,000 to $80,000 that would provide operating support to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the area around the university, using the web site of the organization, and the recommendations of the university, to determine which groups to support. It also means that thousands other donors will contribute their own time, talent and dollars to support the on-going efforts of programs in different parts of the city and suburbs.

That was a long term vision when I wrote this in 2008. It's still just a vision.

It requires many leaders in many organizations and communities. This is why I think some of this leadership should be anchored in universities who have long term commitments to their neighborhoods and the city of Chicago. Through these universities we can engage other teams of volunteers, from hospitals, businesses, civic and social organizations. (I'll write about the role of hospitals, faith groups and businesses in a different article.)

This is not something you can wait for the other college or university to take ownership of. It's a form of leadership and engagement that a student, alumni, professor or administrator can launch from their own blog or web site.

We even created a template of a strategic plan that you might use to start your thinking. We've created a Business School Connection to show how students from the business schools of our major universities could use the skills they are learning to mobilize volunteers and donors for area tutor/mentor programs.

Since 2008 I've created other visual essays to encourage universities to create on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies.  See them in these articles.

As you read the paper this week about another shooting in Chicago, or about some leader promising new hope for America, I hope you'll look in the mirror and say, "Solutions to America's problems start with me."  That's what Jimmy Carter did. 

Thank you for reading and sharing my blog articles.  I hope you'll connect with me on social media (see links here) and help build an on-line community of people who discuss and share these ideas. 

And thank you to those who made 2024 contributions to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  If you did not contribute this year, please make a donation in the coming months.  Visit this page for details. 

When will this end?

I watched a movie titled "The Six Triple Eight" this week on Netflix. It's a war drama film directed by Tyler Perry, focusing on the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black and all-female unit to serve overseas during World War II. They were given six months to fix the three-year backlog of undelivered mail in Europe and faced with massive discrimination, they managed to sort more than 17 million pieces of mail and get it delivered to troops. See more here. 

It's a powerful movie and several scenes brought tears to my eyes.  It also reminded me of how the discrimination these women faced did not end with their success in delivering the mail. It continued when they returned to the United States, from the late 1940s till now, entering 2025.

For the past 23 years I've been building a library of articles related to race, poverty, segregation and inequality in America.  

Browse this section and one of the first articles is this one from The Atlantic, asking "How Did We Get Here?" and sharing "163  years of The Atlantic's writing on race and racism in America."   This is one of more than 100 websites I point to in just this one section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

Another section focuses on Black History and also has dozens of links. Scroll to the bottom and you'll find the Zinn Education Project, with teaching materials that educators, parents and youth program leaders can use to expand our collective understanding of this tragic, continuing, history. 

I majored in history at Illinois Wesleyan from 1964 to 1968.  It wasn't until my senior year when I did my senior thesis on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which consisted of all African-American enlisted men commanded by white officers, that I was officially exposed to this history. And, it wasn't until I started volunteering with a tutor/mentor program in Chicago, serving elementary school kids from the Cabrini Green neighborhood, that I began to take a personal interest, that has grown over 50 years.

Another section of my library focuses on poverty and crime mapping.  One of the sites is the American Inequality site hosted by Jeremy Ney, with data maps and articles like the one shown below. 

You can also find many links in articles on the Mapping for Justice blog. For instance scroll these articles and you'll see how I've shared the American Inequality site. 

The maps are important. This Pew Research Center article provides facts about the U.S. Black population, which was an estimated 47.9 million in 2022.   Scroll down on this page to look at data about educational attainment and household income.  "Among Black U.S. households in 2022, 27% earned less than $25,000, 23% earned less than $50,000, while 51% made $50,000 or more. A third of Black households (34%) earned $75,000 or more, including 22% that made $100,000 or more."

The maps I share focus on that 27% who earn less than $25,000, and who are living in highly segregated, persistently poor areas of big cities and rural areas.  These are places where organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs can expand the networks of opportunity for kids living in highly segregated poverty.

However, the color of your skin and racism affects people of all income levels.  Maps can help target resources and programs to areas of high poverty. They can also show incidents of police violence, traffic stops, drug arrests and other systemic practices that affect people of color more than others.  We need to understand and address both issues. 

Many of the sites I point to are libraries themselves, with links to hundreds of additional books, articles, movies, etc.  There's a lot to learn. Maybe too much to learn.  

Yet, without making the effort the racism and inequality that persists in America will continue. Will you add this to your 2025 commitments?

Thanks for reading my articles this year. I hope you're sharing them.

I can be reached on Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.  See links on this page.

I depend on a small group of donors to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and that enables me to keep the library on line and to keep writing articles like this.  If you can help, please visit this page.

Happy Holidays!

I hope you all enjoy a safe, happy, healthy and hope-filled holiday, in whatever way you choose to celebrate.  

If you have time please browse through articles on this blog and think of ways we can all do a better job of reaching youth and families in areas of concentrated poverty with on-going support that helps kids through school and into adult lives, free of poverty, and with a wide network of support formed through the connections they made while part of organized, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs.

Thank you for reading and sharing.  

Long Term Connections

Yesterday I turned 78 and received nearly 100 "Happy Birthday" greetings on Facebook.  Many were from former students. 

One said, "Happy Birthday Dan! thanks for everything that you have done for us."

Another said, "Happiest of Birthdays to such an amazing person! Someone who shaped me into who I am today! Happy Birthday Dan!!"

A few also showed their support with contributions to my Birthday Campaign.  I appreciate them all.  It's why I keep doing this work.

Look at the history

Over the past few days I've been sharing posts I made in late December of 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Below I've reposted my 2008 article.  Read the "Once in Cabrini Connections, always in Cabrini Connections" message.

---- start 2008 -----

Yesterday when I came to the office I received an email telling me about a funeral being held that morning for the 2-year old daughter of a former Cabrini Connections student. The message came from the volunteer who began mentoring that youth in the mid 1990s and who continues to this day --- more than 15 years later -- to still be a mentor in the life of this youth and his family.

I went to the funeral. It was tragic. The minister said "nothing I say can make sense of this tragic death" but "God has a purpose and maybe this death brings us together and changes our own life direction".

While he was addressing the family and friends of this young man and his wife, he did not realize he was also addressing the Cabrini Connections family. I had not talked to this volunteer in more than a year, or to this young man in about the same length of time. At the funeral I saw, and talked with, others who had been part of Cabrini Connections, or the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program prior to 1992. I'd not seen many of these young people for many years, but have been making an effort to reconnect via Facebook and our Linked in pages.

Maybe this tragedy will be the catalyst that gets more of our former students and volunteers reconnected to our current students and volunteers and each other.

Mentoring is not about reading, writing, test scores, and teacher-directed tutoring. It's about relationships that form because a program like Cabrini Connections is available in the neighborhood, and creates an introduction during one year, that we hope lasts for a life time. Well organized tutor/mentor programs support the match between youth and adult, with the goal that they last for additional years so the bond between young people and volunteers, and the organization, grows and remains supportive as everyone grows older.

Once in Cabrini Connections, always in Cabrini Connections. I've been saying this for many years. I mean it.

Being at this funeral and giving support is just one small example of the type of support mentors can give to youth, and each other. Recognizing that these young adults, who were in elementary school or middle school when we first met them, still need our support for them, and for their own children, is what this community is really all about, and why we need donations from people who read this blog or visit our web sites.

January is National Mentoring Month. As you make your New Year's Resolution I hope you'll read the blogs we write, and learn more about this long-term form of mentoring, and ways that you, your church, your family and your business can support it in 2009 and beyond.

--- end 2008 ---

There have been other funerals since then, and other reunions.  January will again be National Mentoring Month.  The many birthday greetings I received yesterday, and continue to receive today, are a reminder of that commitment to "Once in Cabrini Connections, always in Cabrini Connections" message.

There area still areas of persistent poverty with us. These are places where building programs like Cabrini Connections and helping them last 20 or more years can make a life-changing difference for many youth, and adult volunteers.  Skim through this set of articles showing where poverty is concentrated in Chicago and America. 

If you're reading this, thank you.  Please share it and my other articles and help build support for the type of mentor-rich program I describe in my articles.

And, please read my articles about having universities adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection - click here

You can still contribute to my Birthday Campaign - click here

And there's still time to make a year in contribution to help Fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and help me keep doing this in 2025.  - click here to donate.

Have a safe, healthy, happy and hope-filled holiday.  There will be much to do in 2025. 

Help me help others

I'll be 78 in two days, on December 19th.  Since I formed the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 I've added a "Dan's Birthday" campaign to my year end giving request.  

I did this to appeal to potential donors who were not willing to support Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since it is not a 501-c-3 non-profit due to changes in mid 2011 that separated the Tutor/Mentor Connection from it's non-profit organizational roots dating back to its founding in late 1992.

I've not raised much money each year and have cut expenses dramatically, and have not drawn a salary since 2011. That means that some of the resources built in the 2000s, like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator are now off line, and only available as archives.  I still maintain and share a list of Chicago area tutor, mentor and learning programs and an extensive library of resources people can use to understand where and why volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are needed.

I share this on social media daily and in monthly email newsletters, as well as on the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net website, which really is a workshop for people looking to start and support youth serving organizations.  

If you're reading this you've probably read some of my blogs from the past year, or 20 years!  Thank you.  Now, please visit one of the pages shown below and add your support so I can do this again in 2025.

Dan's 78th birthday - click here

Support Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC - click here