Friday, June 06, 2014

D-Day and Planning

As you read about D-Day and the sacrifices soldiers made seventy years ago, I encourage you to think of the planning that enabled the landing, and the massive buildup of supplies needed to support the landing and the push into Europe in 1944 and 1945.

Then, spend a few moments viewing this video, created for the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC by Kyungryul Kim, an intern from South Korea. His video provided a new interpretation of the ideas presented originally in this PDF essay, which shows strategies needed to build and sustain a wide range of youth serving organizations reaching k-12 kids in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.



Yesterday morning I attended a symposium in Chicago, focused on employment of veterans. In the evening I attended a reception hosted by the Civic Consulting Alliance which "takes on projects with the potential to make a big difference in our (Chicago) region."

I met several people in each event who have talents, skills and networks that could adopt the ideas in the video above into their own efforts, and who could communicate them more effectively, and with greater influence, than I can. Together we could build a better information base to support social/economic problem solving. We could create more frequent communications, serving as advertising to draw needed resources to all of the organizations working in Chicago to solve the same problems, but in different places. We could generate thousands of small group discussions, like those that take places in faith groups each week, where people dig into the information and learn ways to become part of a solution distribution system, which looks very much like the distribution of supplies needed to support troops who landed on Normandy 70 years ago.

Our social sector needs this type of support. It does not exist.

I hope some will take a few moments to view my blog and ideas and will want to find ways to connect.

In this blog article I introduced people I met a few weeks ago, showing how they had the talent to create visualizations and communicate ideas more effectively than I do. I felt the same way as I passed out business cards yesterday.

Here's an example of how Betsey Merkel, who leads the I-Open network in Ohio, has used her blog to communicate my ideas. Here's an article on Kelly Fair's blog, sharing my ideas.

The video above is just one of many presentations created by interns working with me since 2005 and the two blogs I pointed to are just a few examples of how others are amplifying the ideas by communicating them in their own networks.

As you view more on this page I invite you to consider how you might communicate these ideas and support the planning and infrastructure needed to help solve, complex, long-term problems created by high concentrations of poverty and great gaps in wealth and opportunity.

Connect with me on Twitter @tutormentor team, or on my Facebook page. Or connect with me on Linkedin.

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