Poverty and Racism in America - Understand the Issues

It's a new week, but with continuing problems based on past history and compounded by current leadership.  I don't know all the issues, nor most of the solutions.  However, while I've been trying to build my own understanding since I became a volunteer in a Chicago tutor/mentor program in 1993, I've also been sharing articles and resource links that I've found in a library that enables other people to find and use the same information.

Below is what I wrote in May 2023.  I've added a few additional links in the text.

--- begin ---

In early May I watched a presentation hosted by the Urban Institute, featuring Matt Desmond, author of a new book titled "Poverty in America".  Open this link to view the video of the presentation. 

In a follow up email the Urban Institute summarized some of the key points of the webinar.  They wrote:

While no one policy is a silver bullet, Desmond suggests keeping these ideas in mind:

• Social justice: “It’s impossible to write about poverty in America without writing about racism in America,” Desmond said. Black and Latinx families have lower incomes, a lower homeownership rate, less in savings, and ultimately less average wealth than white families. Therefore, any steps forward must come from the position of breaking down segregation and structural racism.
• Targeted universalism: Rather than targeting one solution to each group or each problem, Desmond recommended identifying the desired societal outcome, then implementing many universal solutions that could address it.
• Start with your own influence: “It’s easier to change norms than beliefs,” Desmond said, meaning that individual actions can build political will for larger changes. For researchers, influence can mean empowering communities, advocates, and journalists to tell their own story through data.

Then, on May 21, an opinion article in Politico, by Sheryll Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University and author of several books on racial justice and American democracy, provided an in-depth analysis in an article titled: America’s Poverty Is Built by Design: How did the U.S. become a land of economic extremes with the rich getting richer while the working poor grind it out? Deliberately." 

I added links to Matt Desmond's website to the Tutor/Mentor Library. You can find them here, and here.

I also encourage you to skim through some of these articles. 

I and six other volunteers created Cabrini Connections (a site-based tutor/mentor program) and the Tutor/Mentor Connection in November 1992 following the shooting death of a 7-year old boy, in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago.  I've used this front-page story from the October 1992 Chicago Sun-Times as a reminder and motivation every year since then.

In the summary above Desmond is quoted as saying "individual actions can built political will for larger changes". 

This is not a new problem. However, it's a problem that our leaders can't stay focused on every day, because there are so many other problems.

That's why I think it's important for another level of leaders to emerge, who are totally focused on building a better community understanding, and response, to the problems and solutions.

I've been issuing this invitation for the past 25 years, since we formed Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, in the weeks following the shooting of Dantrell Davis in Chicago back in October 1992. I keep the front page of this Chicago SunTimes story in my office, as a reminder of my responsibility.

I've developed my own actions steps, and posted them on this blog in the past. Here they are again:

If we want to stop this violence, we have to act now, and keep acting to solve this problem for many years. We have to think spatially, that is, look at the entire city and suburban problem, not just one neighborhood. At the same time, we need to act locally, because none of us has the time, or the resources to help each of the kids in the entire Chicago region who live in neighborhoods where poverty is the root cause of the violence.

This animation was done by one of my interns after reading this article.

Here are some ways to remind yourself. Think of ENOUGH, is ENOUGH

E – educate yourself – most of us do not live in high poverty neighborhoods, so we only understand the root causes of senseless shootings from what we read in newspapers. We also only read negative news in the media, so we’re not really well informed on where these events are taking place most frequently. Finally, while there is a perception that there are plenty of youth programs, we really don’t have a good understanding of the distribution of different types of youth programs, to different age groups, in different zip codes. The only way this will change is if each of us pledges to spend one hour a week reading books, articles and web reports, that illustrate the root causes of these shootings, or of poor performance in schools. Through our learning we can draw ideas that we use in our own actions. We can also begin to contribute information that other people use to support their own decision making.

To help with your learning about race, poverty and inequality in America browse the different sections of the Tutor/Mentor library, shown on this concept map. 



N – engage your network – find ways to draw others who you know into this shared understanding. Recognize people who volunteer time and talent, or who help kids through the programs they operate. If you are a business leader, or a church leader, engage your corporation or your congregation. You can use your web site, advertising, point of purchase materials, etc. to point to web sites that show all of the agencies in the city who do tutoring/mentoring, such as www.tutormentorexchange.net. If you do this weekly, year after year, your friends, coworkers and customers will become involved in solving this problem with you.

O – offer help, don’t wait to be asked. As you build your understanding of where poverty is most concentrated, and what social services are in those areas, choose a neighborhood, and reach out with offers of time, as a volunteer, talent, help build a web site, do the accounting, or offer Public relations services, and dollars, if the web site of an organization shows they do good work, you don’t need to ask for a proposal of how they would spend your donation, you need to send them a donation so they can keep doing that good work

U – build a shared understanding. Form groups of peers to share reading and learning assignments, just as you meet every Sunday to read passages of scripture and build the group’s understanding of the Word of God. Use the many different resources of the T/MC Links library as the starting point for your search for wisdom, and understanding.

G – give until it feels good – people who generously donate time and dollars to causes they believe in feel good about their giving. If we’re going to surround kids living in poverty dominated neighborhoods with extra learning and adult mentoring networks, donors will need to give more than random contributions of time, dollars and talent.  

H – form habits of learning, and pass these on to your kids. Imagine how much more successful teachers were if youth came to school every day asking questions about where to find information, or how to understand information they had researched on the Internet the previous day? We can model that habit if we build it into our own activity. Keep a chart where you can document actions you take each week to same sure that this time ENOUGH, really means ENOUGH.

If you document actions, you can review what you’ve done at the end of each month, and each year, and begin to see a growing mountain of actions you have taken to solve this problem. Some of these will be actions that got other people involved, so that the good work you do is multiplying because of the good work others are also doing.

Through this process you help build this shared understanding, which will lead to better public policy. Without this habit of learning, and without learning to use the Internet to find good ideas from people in all parts of the world, we won’t be able to problem solve as well as we need to, and we won’t be able to teach this habit to our kids.

Share this post and the links I point to. Start discussions in your own circles of influence. Be the  YOU in the graphic shown above.

If we do this, we’ll not only reduce the root causes of youth on youth violence, we’ll also address one of the growing issues facing America in a global economy. We will begin to create a nation of learners, problem solvers, creative thinkers and innovators, who use learning and information as the basis of creating opportunity and keeping America great.

Read Leadership ideas here and here

--- end May 2023 --- 

In the above article I talked about "creating new leaders".  In one of the research articles I include this graphic, visualizing a strategy led by universities, funded by mega donors, that creates, and provides on-going support, for such leaders. 

You can find this graphic in this article. You can find more articles showing a sophisticated, long-term strategy, that universities could apply.  They just need donors to provide the motivation. 

Thanks for reading and sharing this article.

Find me on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Facebook (see links here).

If you want to help support my efforts please visit this page and send a small contribution to help Fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. 

What are your volunteers learning?

I saw this post on Twitter this morning, from the Prison Policy Institute, which I point to from my newsletters and my library.

You can follow their posts on Twitter, or on BlueSky, at this link. If you don't live in a high poverty area you probably have never given a lot of thought to how the prison-industrial complex harms people in vulnerable situations and contributes to the on-going problems of persistent poverty.   Follow posts by Prison Policy Institute and others to expand your own understanding. Share these links with your network to increase the number of people who understand the problem and are willing to provide time, talent, dollars and votes toward solutions. 

I started collecting newspaper clips and research articles in the 1970s to expand my own understanding of why a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program was needed and how to lead a constantly improving program.  

I was digitizing some files yesterday when I found this 1994 opinion article by Mark Freedman, who wrote the book Kindness of Strangers.  It's titled "To Help the Young, We Need More Than Mentors". 

Click on this link to view the article in my Google Drive file.

I've built my understanding of the challenges facing kids and families living in areas of concentrated, persistent poverty over the past 50 years.   And, I've been sharing the resources I was learning from with volunteers in the tutor/mentor programs I led, so they could also expand their understanding.  

Because, mentoring alone is usually not enough.  And, volunteers who become informed and empowered can do much to remove many of the barriers, while also helping the tutor/mentor programs they serve sustain and constantly improve their efforts. Which means doing more to help the youth they mentor.

I created this concept map as a guide to articles in the Tutor/Mentor library. Anyone can access this map and dig into the library. Many of the links I point to are extensive resources themselves. 

You can find a link to the Prison Policy Initiative on this page along with many other related resources.

And, I created this concept map to show how volunteers grow over multiple years of involvement in well-organized tutor, mentor and learning programs. It shows my own efforts, and hopefully inspires the design and activities of other programs, in Chicago, and around the country. 

In this "Steps to Start a Tutor/Mentor Program" visual essay I quote Marc Freedman's comments about the potential and the difficulties of mentoring and his suggestion that without infrastructure and support for mentors and mentoring programs, the movement will never reach its potential.

Much of my work since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 has focused on helping programs get the on-going resources needed to provide that infrastructure.

I've used my website, print and e-mail newsletters and blogs to share this information and to try to motivate volunteers to spend time learning and building a greater depth of understanding of why tutor/mentor programs are needed, where they are needed, what types of programs are needed, based on who the mentee is, and what other issues need to be addressed.

The goal has been to build a greater public commitment to the actions that need to be taken, and sustained for many years, to solve the problems that Prison Policy Institute and others highlight in their own media.

View this set of articles to see how I've written about "building public will".   

I point to several hundred youth serving organizations in lists on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website.  I try to open every link, at least once a year, to make sure they work and to see what the program is doing to educate volunteers and donors.  Some point to research showing why their programs are needed. Very few point to my library, or show "educating volunteers" as part of their core strategies.  

That might change if donors looked for such information on a program's website.  

I actually created a visual essay a few years ago which I titled "Shopping Guide".  

This shows some, but probably not all, of the information you should find on an on-going youth tutor, mentor and learning program website.  Programs won't put this information on line unless donors, volunteers and parents are looking for it and unless they have staff and/or volunteers who can put the information on-line.  If you know of programs doing a good job sharing similar information, please share links with me.

Let's connect. You can find me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Treads, and Twitter (still).  Find links on this page. 

Thanks for reading. If you value the information I'm sharing, and the resources on the Tutor/Mentor website, please visit this page and make a contribution. 

Reaching youth in high poverty areas - distance matters

My blog articles aim to motivate readers to think of ways they can be strategically involved in helping kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives over a 12 to 20 year period of consistent support.

In the concept map below I show the logic model that I’ve developed over the past 30+ years and a progression of thinking that I hope you and others will follow.

If you read the concept map, from upper left and follow the 1-7 numbers you'll see the following:

1) Our attention is drawn to problems by negative news stories and new research.  Many stores point to the need for more youth-serving programs. 2) Much of the research shows the benefits of organized, on-going programs. 3) Organized programs provide a way for volunteers and youth to connect. 4) Someone needs to have a list of existing programs so while media attention motivates people to look for ways to get involved, they have a resource that shows them choices of where to get involved.  

5) Once it's accepted that organized programs are needed in many places, we need to recognize that each of them needs a constant flow of the same type of resources (ideas, talent, dollars, technology, etc.). 6) That leads to building an understanding of the challenges of existing funding systems, then innovation of new ways to generate a better flow of flexible dollars into every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

7) So, where are people meeting to talk about this?  What research is available to support these conversations?  

Most kids have a wide range of support from family, community and schools. Kids living in high poverty areas have fewer of these supports. Plus, there are many more challenges impeding their progress. The concept map shown below visualizes these challenges. 

Volunteers who kids meet in organized tutor/mentor programs can be extra adults who help kids overcome many challenges.  But if you look at the maps of Chicago you can see that there are challenges in connecting volunteers who model jobs and different learning opportunities with kids living in areas of concentrated poverty in the city and suburbs.

Distance matters. I write more about that below.

I pointed to a report from A Better Chicago in an article I wrote on April 5th. Pages 26 to 29 of the report focus on the need for community based programs, such as tutor/mentor and learning.

They show that high poverty areas have fewer programs and that “youth of all ages and races overwhelmingly want more access to programs in their communities.” 

I’ve shown this same information on maps since we published our first Directory of Chicago volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in 1994. 

I continue to share lists that people can use to find programs. You can find them here. 

If you’ve read many of my blog articles you’ll notice that I focus on Chicago and big cities. Mainly that’s because it’s where I lived and worked since 1973 and where I began leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in 1975. 

You'll also see that I'm trying to draw attention and resources to every high poverty area, and every volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning program, not just those with the highest profile. Good programs are needed in every neighborhood. That means they need good leadership and consistent funding.

In this article I want to talk about distance, or the time it takes for a volunteer to go from work to a place where she can meet for one, or two, hours with a youth who lives in a high poverty area and attends a school in a high poverty neighborhood. And the three time frames where these connections need to be happening. 

I've used the two graphics shown below for many years. The first shows the role of volunteers from many backgrounds connecting with youth in organized tutor, mentor and learning activities.

The second shows that the non-school hours have two time frames. The traditional afterschool hours, from 3pm to 6pm, are a time frame when parents are still working and kids need supervision. Organized programs are needed in almost every neighborhood. 

The after-five PM hours are a time frame when volunteers are traveling from work to home and can stop for a few hours at a tutor/mentor program site in a high poverty neighborhood to serve as a tutor, mentor, coach, program leader or in other roles.

Both of these graphics emphasize the 12 years it takes for EACH child to grow from first grade to high school graduate, and the 4 to 8 years after that as young people finish extra education and start to find jobs and build careers.

I've used maps since 1993 to show the distribution of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. 

I’ve been trying to build a nuanced understanding of this since we started collecting information about programs. In our Directories we provided information by age group (elementary, middle school and high school) and by type of program (pure tutor, pure mentor, tutor/mentor).   In this article you can read about the interactive program locator that we built in 2004 and updated in 2008, which is now only an archive. It shows what we were trying to do and what others might build in the future. 

By aggregating and segmenting data about existing programs we can ask "How many programs are needed? and "Where are more programs needed?"    Below is a map created in 1997 that shows this question. You can see it in this article. 

When you first look at the map at the right you might say "there are a lot of programs". But when you segment by age group served and type of program you'll see far fewer, especially for older youth.  

We never reached a point where we could survey to learn about arts, technology, STEM, youth leadership, etc. forms of learning in non-school, volunteer-based programs but adding that would offer valuable insight to planners and funders.

We created the map below in the late 2000s. It shows the expressways and rail lines that bring people from the suburbs into the city every day (and from the city to the suburbs). 

Big cities like Chicago, with a large geographic footprint, are measured in miles. From North to South is a distance of about 25 miles.  From the LOOP area in central Chicago to the Oak Park border on the West side is 10.2 miles. Driving through congested areas makes this a long trip for any volunteer trying to leave work during the school day to go to a public school or after school program.  Doing this weekly for several years is a difficult commitment.

Yet, if that volunteer works in the LOOP and lives in Oak Park or further West, there are many places near the transit stops or off the Expressway where that volunteer might stop for a few hours, and keep participating for multiple years.  In the program that I led from 1975 to 1992, hosted at the Montgomery Ward Corporate office on Chicago Avenue, we welcomed volunteers who came from as far away as Naperville! 

Other big cities probably have the same geographic challenges.  Yet there is a huge pool of potential volunteers to draw from, due to the massive population of Chicago and other big cities. There are also huge numbers of kids living in high poverty areas.

So, if you looked at the concept map at the top of this article, are  you talking with people in your network about ways you and them might help tutor/mentor programs grow in Chicago or other cities?

So be the YOU in the graphic below. Share my articles and the resources in the Tutor/Mentor Library and grow the number of people who are thinking strategically, and long-term, about ways to build and sustain mentor-rich non-school programs that help kids in high poverty areas move from birth-to-work.

Every city just needs a consistent, year round communications program that draws volunteers and donors to every existing youth program and shows where more are needed.  Visit this page and see the event strategy developed by the Tutor/Mentor Connection between 1994 and 1998 that I continue to support. Borrow from these ideas to build your own year-round campaigns. 

Then, for all of you who don't live in big cities who are saying "What about us?", start building a library of information, with maps, showing where organized tutor/mentor programs are needed and where existing programs, and volunteer opportunities are located.  And build your own communications campaigns.

In smaller communities it might take less time to go from work to a school during the school day, so more volunteers might engage that way.  However, in rural areas where population density if far less and geography far larger, the problem is different. Mapping where kids live who might benefit from tutor/mentor programs, and places where they might connect with volunteers, is still a step toward a solution, because it provides a solid information base to work from.  However, building long-term, face-to-face connections with volunteers who model many different career opportunities may be more difficult.

In big cities and rural areas and reservations on-line mentoring and tutoring has a lot of potential, but it's long term impact on helping kids through school and into adult lives has yet to be proven.  I point to e-Mentoring and e-Tutoring programs in this section of my library. Learn from what they are doing.

What I'm showing in articles like this  is that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot more people need to be involved, in many ways, for many years.  So if this is something you've been thinking about, please introduce yourself and share your research and your ideas.

This is me in the mid 1990s with a map of Chicago in the background. This could be you in the next few years.  Hopefully it will be many people, not just one, or two.

Let's connect on social media. This page shows where you can find me.

And, this page shows how you can make a contribution to help fund my work. Your help is needed. 

Presidents' Summit for America's Future - 28 years later

In April 1997 representatives from 50 cities and every state gathered in Philadelphia for the Presidents' Summit for America's Future.

I was one of the 10 people representing Chicago and the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) was one of 50 "Teaching Example" organizations who was invited to have an information booth at the Summit.

With help from our Public Relations partner, Public Communications, Inc., we created a video to share.  Sadly we had limited funds for distribution so I doubt that many people ever saw it.

I embedded the video in this 2023 article. 

And, I wrote about the Summit in this 2017 article. 

I also wrote about the Summit in this 2007 article.

I hope you'll take a look and share the ideas with leaders in your community. Sadly, persistent poverty is still embedded in many cities, states and reservations across America.

For those who want to know more about the President's Summit for America's Future you might want to look at some of the media stories from 1997 and following years that I've collected and archived in my Google Drive.  Click here to open. 

Innovating new funding solutions

I wish peace, good health and happiness to all who celebrate any religious holiday this weekend.  However, I'm not sure any GOD is going to help us unless we do more to help ourselves.  Thus....

A few days ago I shared an article titled, "Funders, here's the blueprint for saving democracy", written by Vu Le.   I wrote about it in this article. 

I've used the term "blueprint" in many articles, to show a range of actions that donors, leaders, policy-makers, etc. need to be taking to help make sure well-organized, long-term, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are available in EVERY high poverty area of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

I've been using this "Mentoring Kids to Careers" graphic, along with various versions, since late 1990s, to emphasize the same goals.

In the lower left corner is a map of Chicago, with high poverty areas shaded grey. These are the areas where mentor-rich programs are most needed BECAUSE of how they can expand social capital and aspirations and open doors to opportunity.  

What makes my work unique is that I don't just point to the research.  I maintain a list of Chicago volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs and look for ways to draw volunteers AND donors DIRECTLY to each program, throughout the year.   My long-term goal has been that a program website serves as the "grant proposal" and donors use that, plus the information I share about long-term mentoring, and the need for such programs in high poverty areas, to make funding decisions.

In this article you can find my list of programs and see how I plot them on a map. This helps people find existing programs and hopefully is used by planners to determine where more are needed.

Below I've created another version, highlighting one stage on my career ladder.

Kids grow one year at a time. Support  needed for many years.

It's great to be able to provide a youth tutoring and/or mentoring activity that lasts for one, or two years, but it takes 12 years to move from first grade through high school and four to six more years beyond that to be starting a job and career. Expanding the "who you know" network is critically important for kids living in areas of segregated, concentrated poverty where "who they know" is not as extensive as it is for kids living in more affluent areas.

The challenge Chicago and other places face is building and sustaining k-12 support programs in every high poverty neighborhood.  I've written about this often since starting my blog.  

View in this article

I've been writing articles and sharing graphics like this for nearly 20 years, but as just one voice, I don't have enough impact to influence the massive changes that are needed in how such programs are organized, designed and supported.

Below is another graphic that I use to emphasize the need for continuous flows of flexible operating dollars to youth programs in every high poverty neighborhood.

View in this article

The benefit of long-term support of mentor-rich programs as a form of social capital was reinforced in this 2023 article which points to a report from MENTOR, titled "Opportunities to Invest in Long-Term Social Capital for Our Youth: A Philanthropic Agenda".    

View this group of articles and find more research that donors can use to support funding decisions.

Here's an article about philanthropy that I wrote about in 2018 after it was published by Open Impact. It's titled, "The New Normal: Capacity Building During a Time of Disruption"

I read the article and saw many ideas which I've been trying to implement via the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC since 1993. So I decided to put it on Hypothes.is and re-read it, highlighting relevant parts, and writing comments in the margin that show my own efforts.

In the paper's introduction the writers say "we hope this paper will spark and important conversation". I agree. 

In my comments I suggest that philanthropy would dramatically change if donors were shoppers and if non-profits and social change organizations would put enough information on their web sites for donors, volunteers and clients to make better choices of who they support, and in what ways.  I also emphasize the use of maps to support a better distribution of resources to all high poverty areas of the Chicago region and other places where help is most needed.

Read about Annotation

Thus, I invite you to read "The New Normal: Capacity Building During a Time of Disruption" with three purposes:

1) build a deeper understanding of what I've been trying to do, and to find reasons to support my efforts and help carry them into the future;

2) build a deeper understanding of the challenges facing all social benefit organizations, in the US and the world, and a commitment to draw others into this conversation; and

3) see how on-line annotation works and build a commitment to launch other articles and invite more readers and learners to join in.

I look forward to meeting you in the margins.

So far no one has joined me in reading the New Normal article.   Maybe that's because so few people actually see my articles.

I post on Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIN and occasionally on Instagram. I also have graphics on Pinterest.com.  If you do a Google search for "tutor mentor" my web sites will be on the first page (after paid advertising). Thus, if people are looking, they can find me.

If you're connected to any youth-serving programs in any way (student, alum, volunteer, board member, staff, donor) you can help them attract support by sharing what the organization is doing and making an effort to raise the organization's profile.

You can even write articles like mine.

Thanks for reading!  Enjoy your weekend.

A way forward for philanthropy. A path out of darkness.

My main website is still not working so I'll use my articles to point to the type of links I include in the library.

Here's an article titled, "Funders, here's the blueprint for saving democracy".    It's written by Vu Le, who I've followed for several years.  I urge you to read it.  

I've used the term "blueprint" in many articles, to show a range of actions that donors, leaders, policy-makers, etc. need to be taking to help make sure well-organized, long-term, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are available in EVERY high poverty area of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

I've also used visualizations to communicate ideas, like this one, which I used this in 2021 in an article where I first quoted Vu Le.  

Again, I urge you to read Vu Le's current article.  

You want a plan to save democracy? He says we already have many blueprints, but donors don't use them.  In his current article he says,  "You want a plan to stop fascism? Here it is, broken down into two parts:"

He starts out with "First, stop the bleeding" and list 8 steps that donors should take.  

I love the first step, which I show below:

"Change your founding charters so you can give out more money and fund differently and more effectively, such as funding progressive individuals, movements, mutual aid, LLCs, religious orgs, 501c4s, PACs, and so on. Stop letting policies written during different times and by people who are less likely to suffer under this regime dictate your actions in the present moment."

I've operated as an LLC since 2011 and if donors had been following this thinking since then all of the content that we created through the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) in the 2000s would still be working, with many upgrades that would draw youth programs together and draw volunteers and donors more consistently to every youth tutor/mentor program operating in defined geographic areas.

His second set of strategies come under the heading of "Fight Fire with Fire".

He wrote, "Gather your team and read Sally Covington’s report that spelled out all the strategies conservatives have been using for decades that liberal-leaning funders have largely avoided, which has contributed greatly to the situation we find ourselves in today. (This report is so vital, I’ve created a link you can easily remember: tinyurl.com/rightwingfunding)

It’s time we use conservatives’ strategies, which focuses on FIVE KEY AREAS, which I summarize here but overlay a progressive lens. These strategies need to be funded through Multi-Year General Operating Dollars (MYGOD), for 20 or 30 years at a time, which is what the right has done, which is why they’ve been so effective."

When Vu Le says "Gather your team" I think of the graphic below. Share Vu Le's article, and mine, and start discussions with friends, family, co-workers, etc. and figure ways to adopt the blueprint he's shared.

While I focus on  helping mentor-rich youth-serving organizations grow, which help kids through school and into adult lives, the graphic below shows many other issues that also need long-term, flexible funding.

A similar concept map could be created to show all of the issues we need to address to not only save Democracy, but to move closer to the ideals expressed in the forming of America, which have made this a land of hope, and opportunity, for immigrants of all backgrounds, since the day the first European set foot on these shores.   

Such a strategy would also address the challenges facing the people who occupied the North American continent before the arrival of Europeans.

I have used cMapTools since 2005 to create concept maps like the one shown above (click here).  Since my website is not opening, I can't point you to the page with my entire collection.  However, I invite you to skim these articles and open the maps I've been sharing.

Furthermore, I encourage you to skim the collection of articles I've written about philanthropy (click here).

Then, read these "tipping point" articles. 

And, read my "blueprint" articles.

In many you'll see that I believe this information needs to be aggregated, and taught from universities and high schools as kids move from first grade through school and through their adult lives.  It needs to be part of on-going learning, just as conservative radio and TV had been embedded for the past 60+ years in an on-going public education and influence program.

Donors need to fund this, too.

Thank you Vu Le for your articles.  If people share these in their networks that's the first step toward making them a reality.

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website down for repair

I'm sorry to report that my main website, at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net, is not working today.  I'm in the middle of updating to a new cPanel and am stuck because I'm still using the original Joomla from 2007-8 when the website was rebuilt.  The original was built in 1999.

This means all the links in this blog, that point to my library, and lists of programs will not work.  

Links to my concept maps, like the one below, do work, although links within the concept maps, to my website, will not work.

Links to PDF visual essays, such as you see in these articles, will still work.   

Sadly, I'm not a web developer and have always depended on others for website work. Right now I don't have money to hire anyone for major work, but will be looking at a site like Fiver, for a project-based tech support. 

I'll keep you posted.