1000 posts since 2005

The last article I posted was my 1000th since I launched this blog in 2005. I've tracked traffic each month along with page views. Blogger started tracking stats in July 2009 and I've recorded 66,000 page views since then.

I occasionally meet people who have been getting my email and following my blog when I'm at conferences. A few email me to say "thanks" for what I do. I'd like to hear from more and I hope that these ideas are leading to stronger programs in more places because of the role some people are taking as intermediaries who are trying to help fill neighborhoods throughout a region with great programs.

I'm not sure what the advertising value is for the type of traffic I get. However if you'd like to advertise or be a sponsor, it can help us continue to do this work.

Role of Universities in Social Innovation

This article on the RSA blog explores the role of universities in supporting social innovation. Since I've written often about the role universities could take, I hpe you'll read this and help me connect strategically with universities in the US and abroad.

A connected world

I just read this Made in the World article in the New York Times, written by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN. I found about it through a post made in one of the Facebook groups that I follow.

I'm a small organization operating in Chicago since 1993. I focus on aggregating and sharing ideas and information that anyone can use to help kids in poor neighborhoods move through school with the help of mentors and structured non-school programs. My first exposure to e-learning was by following groups in Australia when I first went on-line in 1998. I use a web based map/directory to show where programs are needed. My first program locator was built in 2004 by a grad student from India. The Interactive Program locator was built by a team in India with a project manager in Baltimore.

Interns from Korea, China and India have been creating visualizations so more people understand our ideas...and they communicate some in their own language so the ideas are available in their own countries. As long as we can imagine new solutions to old problems the possibilities of finding talent to help build these solutions are unlimited.

What we need now are some sponsors and benefactors who will boost our ability to participate in this global marketplace of ideas and innovation. You can advertise with us or you can take a much greater role and help us build and sustain this social problem solving platform.

Advertising Support for Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

Below is a list of advertisers who have paid a $25-$50 fee to have their web site listed for six or 12 months. We appreciate this support because it helps us continue to do the work we do. If you'd like to be included email tutormentor2@earthlink.net

Visit this link to learn more about advertising opportunities on this blog and four other blogs and web sites hosted by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

Note: we are testing this concept. Advertisers will be added as they apply.

Mentoring Summit - Reflections; Call to Action

I was in Washington, DC on Jan 24 and 25 for the 2nd Annual National Mentoring Summit. More than 400 people involved in mentoring programs, networks and support organizations were connected for two days of networking and workshops. Now the real work of putting these ideas into practice takes place.

One of the emotional highlights of the Summit came yesterday during lunch when Beverly Bond, Founder of Black Girls Rock! moderated a panel of students/volunteers who each told of how mentoring made a difference in their own lives.

As I listened to Beverly and this panel it reminded me of the year-end dinner celebration we held each year since 1973 to celebrate the connection of youth and volunteers in the programs I've led in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago. The panel members were different people from different programs, but the messages were the same. As Beverly said, "people in these programs know the many small and big success of tutor/mentor programs." Data and professional evaluation statistics don't paint the real picture. Below is one of many videos created at Cabrini Connections during the past 15 years. You can find more here and here. The video below shows parents speaking at one year-end dinner.

Year-End Dinner 2010: Parent Speakers from Cabrini Connections

These stories are powerful. They need to be told over and over with the same reach and frequency as corporate ads for fast food, banks, and wellness. But we don't have the money. Thus we need volunteers from business, colleges, high schools and faith groups to become our journalists, movie makers and story tellers.

This is another video created by a volunteer and telling our story.

Adopt a program and become their journalist for as long as you can and then recruit someone to take your place. Learn to close your stores with a call to action: "Be a volunteer. Be a donor. Be an intern. Be a business partner."

Then go one step further, point to a directory of tutor/mentor programs for your city, and say "we need great programs in every high poverty neighborhood." Point to videos, web sites, an social media places that expand the range of places and ways volunteers and donors can help tutor/mentor programs grow in an entire community, and in every state in the Union.

This video does that. It was created a couple years ago by one of our interns. The contact information at the end has changed. We're no longer part of Cabrini Connections. However the message and purpose of the video has not changed.

I'm no longer leader of a single tutor/mentor program because I could not find enough dollars to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection operating under the umbrella and funding base of one small program. However, I'm no less committed to helping strategies grow in business, faith groups, philanthropy, media and government sectors that provides "a better operating system" and does more to make constantly improving mentor and/or tutor programs available in more places to help more kids through school and into adult responsibilities.

If you've been touched by these stories or have responded to the President's Corporate Mentoring Challenge, I'd like to become a resource to help you develop strategies that benefit youth, your employees, your company and the community.

Mentoring Summit - Social Capital Connections

This graphic shows a small part of the network of people who have helped inner city Chicago kids move through school and into jobs and careers through the efforts of programs I've led at Montgomery Ward and Cabrini Connections since 1975. I think more programs who can build and sustain these connections should be available in big city neighborhoods. Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC I've been trying to make that happen.

Next week I'll be in Washington, DC attending the National Mentoring Summit. While I'm there I hope to connect with leaders from different cities and states. I also hope to connect with people who are not able to attend the Summit, but who will connect with me and others via Twitter and Facebook.

Use this link to connect with the Summit on Twitter. Conversations regarding the summit will use the Hashtag #Mentor2012

To connect with MENTOR on Facebook go to http://www.facebook.com/MENTORnational

While my goal is to find partners, benefactors and corporate leaders who will support our efforts in Chicago, I also am hoping to connect with leaders who view mentoring and tutoring as a strategy for expanding the social capital of youth living in highly segregated, poverty neighborhoods of big cities. I've written articles about social capital in the past and point to research that I'm reading that show how the income of your parents and wealth of your community determines your future and impacts your performance in school. If that's true, we should be looking for ways to demonstrate the growth of the network of adults and experiences surrounding youth who participate in these programs as opposed to youth who don't have access to well-organized tutor/mentor programs.

I've been building my network of ideas, friends, peers for over 30 years. What if kids in inner city neighborhoods were able to build their own networks over a period of years and what role might tutor/mentor programs have in accelerating that process. This graphic illustrates the growth of a network over time. This PDF shows this in a much more strategic way.

Thus, my hope is that next week in Washington I'll connect with leaders who also are thinking of volunteer involvement in organized tutor/mentor programs as a strategy for building social capital for a youth, for the volunteer and for the programs that enable these connections to take place.

If you're one of these people and want to connect with me in DC, or via Twitter or Facebook, contact me and let's find time to meet. Find me on Twitter @tutormentorteam and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TutorMentorInstitute

Steps toward collective action

I'm attending the National Mentor Summit
next week in Washington, DC and on Monday January 30 I'll be co-hosting a panel discussion of Mentoring leaders from 7pm-8:30 at
First Unitarian Church, Hyde Park, IL. You can see the invitation for that event here.

So how do we build on what takes place in these two events so we can influence the growth of mentor-rich programs in thousands of locations around the country and in the Chicago region?

I'm part of a variety of information sharing networks and one of my Facebook connections posted this thoughtful article this week.

I met with a volunteer who I've known for 30 years yesterday and we both agreed that most adults are too busy to read through articles like this, or to read through all of the ideas and strategies I share on the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site.

We have a society that wants quick fixes to complex problems and with people who have too little time, commitment or discipline to spend time learning about problems and solutions on an on-going basis.

So how do we overcome this? Service Learning.

If we engage young people with this information as part of service learning, study programs, college PhD work, they can spend years building their own understanding. They can also learn to communicate what they are learning in blog articles like the one I pointed to, or like those our interns are posting on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

We can build a new generation of leaders who have dug much deeper into social problems and collective solutions, but who come to adult roles with habits of learning from others in a networked-world.

I wrote about the Broad Foundation last summer because they are putting millions of dollars into an effort to train future leaders who will be embedded in the education infrastructure all over the country within 10-15 years...and they will be connected to each other and the ideas the Foundation will continue to share.

All we need is one philanthropist or business to invest in the Tutor/Mentor Institute in the same way, and we can build a network of leaders who share ideas from our library in every city in the world and who work together to attract the operating and innovating resources needed throughout the network to make these ideas a reality in changing future lives for kids living in economically disadvantaged areas.

It starts with finding researchers/writers who will dig deeper into these ideas and work to share them via their own talent and communications skills.

Day of Service. Day of Learning!

The Dr. M.L.King, Jr. National Holiday is Monday, Jan. 16 and, like previous years, I’ve seen numerous articles encouraging people to go out and “volunteer” with suggestions including “prepare meals for a soup kitchen, visit the elderly and assemble food and toiletry kits for the homeless”. Here’s one story about the Holiday.

Last Thursday I saw an announcement from the Serve Illinois Commission where Comcast is seeking community-based organizations to partner with for a company-wide annual day of service during the April National Volunteer Week.

These service projects are great for team building and for short term, done-in-a-day projects. And they do necessary and helpful work. But do they really make a dent in poverty and complex social problems where more help is needed every day of the year, not just on national holidays?

What if employee volunteers, family and friends were encouraged to do a “day of learning” where they visited web platforms with information related to poverty, education issues, challenges non profits face, etc. and where they begin to look at ways they and people they work with could offer time, talent and dollars throughout the year to support a full range of organizations working in different neighborhoods, but on the same problem?

What might they study? Below is a map I created a couple of years ago to show how groups could learn about the connections between poverty, education and health from a variety of sources. Such learning could lead more people to understand the value of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs and the need for such programs to be located near youth living in high poverty areas.

Thus, while many people could be painting classrooms, working in food pantries, or building housing on Monday, many others could be meeting at churches, business locations, hospitals, homes and in on-line learning communities, where they draw from an on-line library of articles and ideas.

This map is from the GUEST MAP on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. If you visit the map you can click on the icons and see comments and introductions from people who have visited the site in the past. The map illustrates our goal of serving as a "social problem solving platform" that can be used by people from throughout Chicago, and the rest of the world.

The potential for groups to connect in on-line learning groups is growing. I’ve written about organized on-line learning communities in the past. Here’s the link. Here’s a web site hosting on-line learning.

I’ve written hundreds of articles on this blog and I’ve pointed to articles written by people far smarter than I am. I have more than 1900 links in a web library that show where and why volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are needed and why it’s good for business to support volunteer-involvement on a year-round basis

Furthermore, I've created an on-line directory that uses maps to help visitors understand where high poverty neighborhoods are in the Chicago region and where volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs are located, or needed.

The learning that people do tomorrow and throughout the year can help more people understand the lack of mentoring, tutoring, learning, jobs, etc. that contribute to hopelessness and the gang culture that breeds violence and poor education outcomes in many of these neighborhoods. By visiting web sites of dozens of youth programs in Chicago and all over the world, volunteers, donors, business partners and program leaders can share the responsibility of building and sustaining world-class tutor/mentor programs in EVERY poverty area by borrowing from the best ideas from any of these programs and by providing the talent, dollars, technology needed on an on-going basis to implement these ideas.

At the end of a day of reflection individuals and groups can post blogs, update wikis, and share their ideas in forums like http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com or in Facebook. If you've a favorite place for sharing ideas and collaborating with others, please tell us about it.

I'm going to be taking part in a week long learning and networking effort, starting tomorrow. It's called JELLY WEEK. If you click on the JELLY WEEK map you can see that teams from nearly 200 places and more than 30 countries are participating. I'm part of a about a group collecting information about education efforts throughout the world. Members come from South America, Austria, Sweden and many other countries.

If this type of collective learning is happening throughout the year, and during every national holiday, those who do service and those who do learning will be building better understanding of the complex problems we face and a more sophisticated range of solutions.

As a result, more people will become directly involved in places throughout Chicago working to help solve social problems, and will be connected to people and ideas of other people throughout the world who are doing similar work.

To me, the “I Have A Dream” speech means that some day in the future the problems of poverty, social inequality, wealth gaps, hunger, etc. will be less than it is today because of what we learn, and what actions we take based on what we learn.

That won’t happen unless short term service projects are matched by learning, reflection and information sharing.