Without Effective Leadership Same Problems Continue

Yesterday I wrote an article pointing out how the Polk Bros retail stores used advertising to build attention and draw customers to their stores, and how they used events, sales promotions, give-aways, etc. to motivate customers to buy something when they came to those stores.

I also told of my participation in a DEEPER LEARNING MOOC, #dlmooc, connecting more than 1000 people. Last January I participated in an Education Technology and Media MOOC (#ETMOOC) and this week participants like Paul Signorelli, have written reflections showing all the benefits of participating.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 with a goal of helping constantly improving, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach youth in more places. In this 4-part strategy map, you can see that step two of the strategy is to increase the frequency of media stories that would lead to greater volunteer and donor support of growing tutor/mentor programs.

One strategy to achieve this goal was to create map-stories following negative news stories in local medial.

These are a few examples of map-stories created in the 1990s. If you browse through articles on this site tagged 'media', 'maps' or 'violence' you will see many more examples, created in the 2000s. Visit the Mapping For Justice blog and you'll see many more examples of maps used to draw attention and resources to areas with high crime and violence, high concentrations of poorly performing schools, and high violence.

The result of this campaign should be maps that show more programs in more places, along with charts showing programs like the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth growing in more industries, and growing the amount of money and volunteer involvement from their industry on a year-to-year basis.

However, that has not happened. Why?

I can not find evidence that any leader, from any industry in the Chicago region, has devoted consistent advertising resources to draw attention to tutoring/mentoring, and to draw volunteers and operating dollars to programs throughout the city, or to programs near places where they do business, or where employees or customers live.

I can not find evidence that the current, or former mayor of Chicago, or any alderman, state elected official or county president, has led a weekly, yearly campaign, intended to draw needed volunteers, dollars and technology resources to the tutor/mentor programs operating in various Chicago neighborhoods. Even the occasional public declarations of support for Chicago's kids don't work like a Polk Bros ad to draw attention to tutor/mentor programs all over the city, and to motivate people to volunteer time, or give operating dollars, to support existing programs, or to help new programs start in neighborhoods with great need, but too few programs.

This Village Map shows that people from many sectors need to be involved in helping kids grow up and be prepared for 21st century jobs. If leaders post on their web sites what they do to build successful tutor/mentor programs, using maps to show where they are helping, and charts to show how many volunteers, dollars are involved, and how that grows from year to year, we could put links on the village maps to their web sites.

When we show leaders in every sector, leading a Polk Bros type advertising campaign, over a 10 to 30 year period, we will begin to see the number of mentor-rich programs grow in more places, and we'll begin to see more stories of how young people were helped through school and into a job by a mentor and/or a business.

Until that happens we'll continue to have media stories showing tragedy and high profile people, but not ending with a "call to action" that points to places throughout the city where help is needed and where people can get involved.

What's needed to support this data collection, map making, etc.? How can youth take a meaningful role? Let's meet to talk about this.