"It Takes A Village to Raise a Child". Who's Building the Village?

11-16-16 update:  Hillary lost. Trump won.  I wrote this in July, but the message and need for leadership from the private sector is now even greater than if Clinton had won.
The nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party's candidate for President is historic in many different ways.  Only history will tell us what the result will be.

During her Thursday evening speech, she referred to a book she wrote in the 1990's titled, "It Takes A Village".

 According to Wikipedia, "The book's title is attributed to an African proverb: "It takes a village to raise a child." The saying and its attribution as an "African" proverb were in circulation before it was adopted by Clinton as the source for the title of her book."

Thus, Clinton did not originate the term. She borrowed it to emphasize her commitment to children.

I've borrowed it, too, and used it in this concept map:

If you click here, you can find 30 articles where I've used this "It Takes a Village" concept since I started this blog in 2005.  I use the ideas as a strategy that needs to be growing in cities all across the country, and demonstrated with web sites that show a commitment visualized in the strategy map below.



When people in business, media, entertainment, politics, religion, education, colleges, and every other part of the "village" adopt this commitment, with themselves shown in the blue box at the top of the graphic, then we can begin to build the public will and long-term commitment needed to fill every high poverty neighborhood in a city with a wide range of supports needed to help kids move successfully and safely from birth to adult lives free of poverty.

How to get started? Make a leadership commitment, as a teacher, a college professor, a Rabbi, a CEO, then appoint someone to take the lead. Start a learning process, where you open and close every node on the strategy map so you know the information it's sharing, and you know what your commitment involves.

Role of Leaders - How CEOs can help inner city youth from birth to work by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

View these presentations, created by interns, as part of their own learning between 2006 and 2014. Youth and adults could be creating similar presentations, focusing on their community and their strategies.

Not everyone is happy that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party's candidate. The Republicans have plenty of hate for her.

Yet, raising kids and helping them be healthy, productive, contributing adults who can keep America great, and keep this planet safe and nurturing of all of its different populations and resources...human, animal, plant... is something that everyone should be able to agree on.

It does take a village. But until we have responsible, on-going, commitments of time, talent and dollars from every part of the village, supporting youth in the most economically challenged parts of every city, these will just be empty words.

That means students, volunteers, college researchers, and others will need to learn to create maps that show who in the village is involved, and who is still not involved.  You can see some examples of event mapping of past Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, at this link. Many different forms of mapping are highlighted in articles on the Mappingforjustice blog.

Part of the learning that people do will need to include finding ways to map participation .

I've been posting ideas on this blog, on web sites and in printed newsletters since 1994. The tags on the side of this blog are shown in this graphic, and in articles like this,  in an effort to help people navigate through this vast web of information and ideas.

If you share this commitment, please share this and other ideas shared on this blog and my Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.  Help build the village in every part of the country.