Why do we do what we do?

Tonight Cabrini Connections will celebrate the end of it's 15th full school year of providing one-on-one tutoring/mentoring and extra learning to 7th to 12th grade teens living in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago. Teens will be the speakers, moderators and performers. Awards will be given for leadership, attendance, improvement, etc. You can see a student and volunteer year end survey on the CC web site.



The Cabrini Connections program is where the Tutor/Mentor Connection originated. Our daily efforts to build a single program led us to create a structure that would help all programs be more successful in getting needed resources to constantly innovate ways to inspire kids and volunteers to attend weekly sessions and learn from each other. Cabrini Connections is where we get our passion, and understand the reality of how difficult our work is.

You can view a timeline showing the growth of this organization from 1965 till the present.

While we're constantly seeking donations to fuel our work, our aim is that volunteer-based programs like Cabrini Connections are in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other big cities and that some day in the future there will be hundreds of year end celebrations at this time of the year. That's the goal of this blog, which is part of the Tutor/Mentor Connections year-round strategy.

That will only happen is some of the ideas I've shared for the past few days take root in business, professional, college and high school groups throughout the Chicago region and in other cities.

I'll write more about this tomorrow. Let's go congratulate our teens, volunteers and staff for what they have accomplished this past year.