Organized Mentoring - a Service Learning Opportunity

I've often heard volunteers say they learned more from being involved with mentoring and tutoring than they think the kids did.

I've tried to build this into mentoring program strategy for more than 30 years because I feel that  until more adults from beyond poverty become deeply involved, and willing to sacrifice time, talent and dollars, for many years, we just won't have enough well-organized programs doing all that needs to be done to reach kids in high poverty areas with organized non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning, and to stay connected all the way through school and into work and adult lives.

Below is a video I created this week, to show an animation created by an intern working with the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 2011.   This was originally created using Flash Animation, and is an update of a project originally done by another intern in 2007. Since browsers no longer support Flash animation, I've created this and a few other videos to archive the work, and keep them available to future users.




My focus is on the middle of this figure eight graphic. The information I host in the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library can be used by leaders of any organized youth program to help volunteers be more effective, on-going, tutors and mentors.  It can also be used to arm volunteers with information, ideas, and tools that they take back to their friends, family, coworkers, business, etc. to evangelize the tutor/mentor movement and encourage others to be involved, not only as tutors and mentors, but as tech support, accountants, lawyers, marketers and donors who help build and sustain strong programs in more places.

On this page is a PayPal button that you can use to provide some badly needed dollars to help me continue to maintain and share the ideas I've been aggregating since the early 1990s.

This video is one of many projects that can be found on this page.  I hope you'll view these and use them in group discussions and planning that supports the growth of needed non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in poverty areas of the Chicago region and other cities.