Chicago Schools Chief Seeks Help. Hello! We're Here.

In the Business section of today's, 11/29/09, Chicago Tribune, is an article listing help Chicago Schools Chief Ron Huberman seeks to support his strategy to help about 10,000 at risk youth. (This number keeps growing. When the program was first announced it was targeting about 200 youth).

If you read the article, he's calling for the same types of business involvement that I've been calling for since I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. The only difference is that he's pointing to a new program that has not yet been created, and I'm pointing to the existing volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs that already exist in Chicago and who can't build the infrastructure needed to support effective tutoring/mentoring if leaders like Huberman and the Mayor don't try to draw resources to every program, every day.

I'm just a small voice in Chicago. But I write these blog articles so other people, with larger voices, can read them, and integrate them into their own leadership. If you know Mr. Huberman, or if you're thinking of devoting some business resources to helping the program he is launching, I encourage you to read some of the strategy articles on this blog.

I also encourage you to read some of the research, like this Critique of Youth Mentoring in the UK.

If our leaders don't build an infrastructure and supply system that helps great tutor/mentor programs grow in all high poverty, high risk neighborhoods, they will spend millions of dollars and still not get the results they, and the business community, are seeking.