Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Map your Network. Nudge your Network.

One of the books I've read is titled Jesus, CEO. It talks about how one person, with just a few friends, and no high level connections (on this earth)was able to change the world.

I'm one of those grains of sand on the beach that you never notice. Yet, my goal is to change the future for kids born in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago, not just the kids who participate in the Cabrini Connections program that I've led since 1993.

So, without any high level friends, no wealth, and only 24 hours in each day, how can I have an impact on the world. How can YOU have an impact on your world?

Below is a map of one part of my network.

If you click here, you can see this live.

This map shows places hosted by Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, where we share our ideas and try to help people get involved with what we do.

The map shows places such as Social Edge, where we participate in discussions hosted by others. It shows links to our blog list, where there are more than 100 blogs where I've shared ideas, and where smarter people than me are writing about the same issues that I care about.

It shows the social media where I have friends and where I connect with many others. It also shows some of the fund raising portals where we try to raise money.

I spend time every week, visiting most of these sites, posting messages that I feel add value, and which I hope will encourage people to visit the CC, T/MC sites to learn more.

In this graphic, the goal is to illustrate a funnel, with the narrow end pointing to the information hosted on T/MC web sites. Imagine how many people in the world care about the same issues we care about, who could be mapping their own networks, and spending time every week, encouraging the people they know to look at the information we host, and find some way to help tutor/mentor programs connect with kids as part of strategies to help those kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Everyone has a network. Anyone can map their network. Anyone can nudge their network.

You can have a greater impact on the world than you think, if you are following some of these ideas and pointing your network to information that they can use to support the cause you are focusing on.

If you're doing this, why not share you maps with us so we can learn from you.

3 comments:

Chandra said...

I am currently a graduate student seeking a blog regarding tutoring services for college students. Does your organization offer such services.

Tutor Mentor Connections said...

This blog focuses on helping adults connect with k-12 youth and helping programs that offer tutor/mentor services get the resources they need.

You might browse the links in the Tutor/Mentor Library to see if you find blogs you're looking for, however, I don't make an effort to collect information related to tutoring at the college level. If you find some good blogs, I encourage you to submit them as links to the t/MC site.

Unknown said...

Just saw your comment and link to this post from the Social Capital blog. Your mindmap and approach to changing the mentor/youth world through "nudges" is really well written/described here. I am a firm believe in one little nudge being able to impact significant change and am so glad the nonprofit world has someone like you to learn from (so - I tweeted your post to my network..)

Great work -

@AndreaLearned
http://learnedon.com