All of the articles I've posted since starting this blog in 2005, and shared in the Tutor/Mentor Institute library since 1998, have focused on supporting non-school tutor/mentor and learning programs that connect with youth in elementary or middle school, then stay connected to help those youth through high school and into adult lives and jobs.
What are all the things we need to know and do to make effective, on-going volunteer-based programs available in hundreds of locations of a big city like Chicago? I started asking that question in 1975 when I became the volunteer leader of a single program. While starting a new site-based program serving Cabrini-Green teens, I and six other volunteers, created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to build a library, sharing my experiences, along with those of others in Chicago and around the country. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, or starting from scratch, anyone should be able to borrow ideas from work already being done in different places.
We launched the T/MC with four strategies which are shown in this concept map. These need to be taking place within each individual tutor/mentor program, and at each resource provider, as well as in intermediary organizations.
Click this link to see the map. Let's look at this in more detail.
The graphics below show each section of this map.
Step 1. I've been collecting information about existing tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and showing that on maps since 1994, with the goal that volunteers, donors and leaders would use the maps to find programs in different neighborhoods that they could join and/or support, and that they could use to see where more programs are needed. In addition, I've built a huge library of links to articles showing where and why these programs are needed along with ideas programs could use to build stronger organizations and that volunteers can use to be more effective tutors and mentors and advocates for strong programs.
When you go to the concept map you'll see small boxes at the bottom of each element of the map. The box on the left points to external web sites and the box on the right points to additional concept maps. Thus under the Step 1 node you can find five additional concept maps that provide greater levels of detail and point into sections of the web library.
In this library you'll find links to youth serving organizations throughout the country as well as articles about philanthropy, fund raising and volunteer recruitment and training.
Step 2. No mater how good the information in Step 1 is, it has little value if too few people are finding and using it. Thus, step two focuses on creating a daily frequency and reach of stories that talk about tutoring and/or mentoring and encourage people to visit the web library then search for programs they can support. This page shows a list of newspaper stories generated as part of this step. This concept map shows some of the web spaces where we share this information.
Since the Tutor/Mentor Connection never had much money for advertising or public relations support, the strategies intend to recruit many leaders who will help create this public awareness, using their own visibility and communications tools.
Step 3. With so much information available there is a need to help people understand and apply the information collected in Step 1. This article and many that I've posted in the past are examples of how I do this, and how others could take the same role. I hosted a Tutor/Mentor conference in Chicago every six months from 1994 through May 2015 to bring people together to learn from each other. I use social media daily to share information from the library, and to draw greater attention to tutor/mentor programs on my list.
The leadership strategies on this page show how this information facilitation role can happen at colleges, hospitals and businesses.
Visit this page and see how interns from many colleges have created blog articles, videos and visualizations to help people understand Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies.
View this concept map and see how others are using their own blogs to help people understand and use information collected in Step 1.
Step 4. The result of better information (Step 1) and more people looking at it (Step 2) and more people understanding how to apply the information (Step 3) should lead to more people seeking out tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods to offer their time, talent and dollars to help programs constantly improve what they do to help kids connect with volunteers and learning opportunities and move more safely through school and into adult lives.
This is where the maps play an important role. By mapping locations of concentrated poverty and other indicators showing where people need more hope, our goal is that more support flows to programs serving youth in every part of the Chicago region, not just to high profile neighborhoods or high profile organizations.
In some cases this means supporting well designed programs. However, in other cases it may mean trying to help programs become better than what they are today.
If you're not in Chicago you can use everything in this strategy. You'd only need to build your own directory of local programs, maps and indicators of need.
This cycle repeats from year to year. As we help programs grow, and help them show their program design, strategies and successes on their web sites (see shoppers guide pdf), we're also updating the information available in Step 1. Furthermore we're constantly adding new links to the web library, and almost every link we point to is also adding new information to their web sites.
Each year we need more leaders to make a commitment to helping kids in poverty areas move through school and into jobs, using this four part strategy to achieve that goal. As we succeed we provide continuous flexible funding and a flow of volunteer talent that helps every program, not just a few.
And that means we reach more k-12 youth, with better on-going support.
What can you do?
This article shows steps you can take. Form a study circle in your business, faith group, high school, alumni or social group and read articles like this, or from the Tutor/Mentor library, on a regular basis, then discuss ways you and your group can use your own talent and resources to help programs in one or more parts of the region become the very best in the world at helping kids move through school and into jobs and adult lives.
Here's a short video showing these steps.
And here's a pdf presentation showing the four part strategy. I also showed the four steps in this article. Finally, below is another concept map visualizing help needed on every one of these steps, if we're going to have the impact we need to have, helping thousands of k-12 youth in Chicago and its suburbs, and helping youth in similar cities around the country.
If you want to offer your talent, become a sponsor, or support this effort in other ways please introduce yourself with a comment below, or email me at tutormentor2 at earthlink dot net.
Click here to see where you can find me on social media.
I encourage you to skip over to the MappingforJustice blog and see a story I wrote today about the Connected Learning #clmooc group, which has members located in all parts of the US and the world.
In today's issue of the BlackStar Project newsletter, Phil Jackson offers 12 reasons why the billions of dollars spent on anti-violence and anti-poverty programs are not having as much impact as we hope. He points to a WBEZ radio interview where Phil and Chip Mitchell, WBEZ’s West Side reporter, discuss Chicago's anti-violence efforts.
If Chicago is ever going have a comprehensive prevention and intervention strategy, reaching into all high poverty neighborhoods, many, many more people will need to be involved in order to build the public commitment needed to make comprehensive programs available, and keep them in place for a decade or longer.
Using maps to know who is already involved and to see who needs to be involved should be a fundamental strategy that is used in many places.
If you'd like my help and ideas let's set a time to talk.
I'm more convinced than ever that if we want to address the root causes of violence and poverty in Chicago we need comprehensive, long-term solutions that influence what people beyond poverty neighborhoods do, using their time, talent, dollars, jobs and votes.
Making change happen is a process. In my articles I use maps, showing high poverty areas throughout Chicago, with the goal that groups of people from many sectors will join in a learning and planning process that begins to fill each area with a range of needed services that help young people move through school and into jobs and careers free from poverty. The map below visualizes this process.
Making change happen is a long-term process, thus recruiting leaders who will fuel that process with dollars, talent, visibility and network building skills is essential to support the planning process and build and sustain the public will needed in such efforts.
I've written a couple of articles in the past inviting wealthy philanthropists to support this process, such as this one.
Then, in my Facebook feed yesterday, I saw this article about John Arnold, who created The John Arnold Foundation (TJAF) in the mid 2000s. If I read the article correctly, TJAF does its own research and seeks out projects it wants to support.
I've occasionally had donors find me as a result of their own internet search. One of those resulted in a $50k anonymous donation in late 2007 that enabled me to build the interactive Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator in 2008-09.
Unfortunately that did not result in repeat donations which ultimately led to the need to create the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 to try to keep the program locator and other resources of the Tutor/Mentor Connection available to Chicago and other cities. I've not been able to update the program locator since 2013.
It's about filling high poverty neighborhoods with programs that bring a wide range of needed support to youth and families, which if supported continuously for many years, will help reduce violence, income disparities and poverty by helping more young people move to jobs and careers.
I'm not just writing theory. I've continued to maintain a list of Chicago non-school tutor and mentor programs, which I started building in 1993*, which is available at this link. The donor who gave my organization $50k in 2007 also gave a similar amount to two other Chicago tutor/mentor programs, using my data about programs to find and investigate programs that were later funded.
School is starting again soon. Multi millionaires are running for Governor of Illinois. Many others are active in all sorts of philanthropy. Do your research. Get to know the programs on my list. Let the web site of an organization be its proposal. Reach out with offers of help to programs in many neighborhoods, not just to a few high profile programs. If you're not in Chicago and no one is maintaining a list of programs, then you can help someone start a T/MC type organization in your own community.
As you're doing your research, read this article, which I posted earlier this week. Take a visible role and motivate other leaders to duplicate your own efforts.
*I actually started building a list of Chicago tutor/mentor programs in 1975 when I started leading a local program and was searching for ideas that I could borrow to support my own efforts. By building a list, and a library, I began to share ideas that anyone could use to help make mentor-rich programs available in more places. I've been doing this for over 40 years.
Below is a concept map that I've shared since 2005 showing a commitment I feel needs to be made by many leaders, if we're ever going to build the comprehensive system of supports kids living in high poverty areas need to move more safely and successfully through school and into adult lives.
I've listened to leaders for the past 30 years who talk about helping kids, but have not found any using maps or visualizations the way architects and engineers use blueprints to create a shared vision of work that needs to be done.
In 2011 when Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was elected for his first term, I created this video, imagining him talking and guiding people through the ideas shown on this map. I put the video on Vialogues recently with some comments to update it, and invite others to re-do this with more polish and professionalism than what I had done. It really is of pretty poor quality. Ugh.
Note: Chicago electing new Mayor in 2019. Can someone create a new version of this video?
I created three close ups, to provide a script for what people might say in such a video.
Look at the left hand side: Follow the lines connecting the nodes on the map, which start at the top with "my goal is".
Then, look at the right hand side, showing that the strategy recruits workplace volunteers, to support comprehensive k-12 programs, that reach youth in high poverty neighborhoods with a range of needed supports.
Look back at the top of the graphic. The vision is achieved by following a four-part strategy, shown by another concept map. The vision is also achieved by recruiting other leaders to also adopt the strategy.
The words are there. This strategy applies in any city where there are inequalities and wealth gaps, with areas of people living in concentrated, segregated poverty. That means youth or adults from any city could look at these maps and my original video, then create new versions with their Mayor, local celebrities and sports stars, CEOs, faith leaders, and community activists sharing the same message and the same commitment.
If enough people make this commitment, and renew it from year-to-year for the next decade or two, we might begin to have more mentor rich learning programs in high poverty areas with the on-going support each needs to hire and retain talented staff, who can attract kids and volunteers, and keep them involved as the kids move from elementary school, through middle school and high school, then on toward jobs and adult lives.
School is starting soon. It wold be a great time for this video to appear on social media, with leaders showing their commitment to the strategy by saying "be a volunteer" and pointing to directories of youth serving programs in their communities, which were created as part of step 1 of the four part strategy.
I wrote this article in July 2017. I'm updating it today, March 2019.
It's not enough to wish more leaders would adopt this strategy, we need to know who is so we can recognize them in front of their peers, as a strategy to influence more people to also adopt the strategy. Take a look at the concept map shown below:
I'm sure you've heard the "It takes of village to raise a child" statement. What this map visualizes are the many different stakeholders in any community, organized in clusters. If you've looked at my concept maps, you'll see that at the bottom are nodes linking to other web pages, or other concept maps. For instance, at some point in the future you might click on the circle with "legal community" and open a new map, where "legal community" is the hub and the spokes lead to the many different types of businesses and professions make up the legal community.
If you've read this far, and opened the different links under each node on the strategy map, you'll find this 4-part strategy. These are the actions that must happen in every city for leaders to be able to keep their commitment.
Thus, if people were adopting the strategy map, and putting a version of it on their own web sites, we should be able to put links from this village map to their pages, thus aggregating links to leaders who are making a long-term, comprehensive commitment, to help kids grow up.
I can't do t his by myself. I need the help of many to spread the word, gather the info, update the maps, etc.
However, if you do adopt this strategy and put it on your web site, please send me a link so I can put a link to your site in my village map, share it with the world.
If you want to act as a producer and/or sponsor and help me re-do my own versions of these videos and strategy presentations, I want to hear from you. I need your help.
If you've read articles on this blog regularly, or are just visiting for the first time, my purpose is to help well-organized, volunteer-based tutor and mentor organizations grow in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities. That means I need to influence what resource providers, policy makers and other leaders do, as well as what volunteers and leaders of tutor/mentor programs do.
I do this by drawing attention to programs doing good work, such as Highsight, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this fall. The image at the right is from their Winter2017 newsletter.
While I host this blog and a web library and share ideas on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site, I don't have a staff or any dollars for advertising (since 2011), so to learn about programs, I follow them on social media and look at their web sites, using this list of Chicago area programs, which I've maintained since 1994.
I use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter regularly and feel that more useful research information is being shared regularly on my Twitter feed than what I see on my LinkedIn or Facebook feeds. At the same time, by looking at the Facebook pages of local programs I'm able to stay informed by those who post regularly (not all do).
Over the weekend I created a concept map to show conversations I have been following on Twitter, which are identified with a #hashtag. Take a look.
With each node I've included a link which you can click and go to that Twitter feed. I think that most people use #hashtags to draw people together for short term conversations, perhaps in support of a conference, meeting or on-line webinar. I participate in these regularly, and actively share ideas from my own work while Tweeting and "liking" ideas posted by others. In every conversation I meet one or two new people who I follow, so I can see information they post regularly, or who follow me for the same purpose.
However, I also go back to these conversations regularly to see what people are talking about, and sharing with one of these #hashtags. By creating the concept map, I, or you, can easily click into several of these conversations any time you want. I also use Tweetdeck, but it gets unmanageable if you're trying to keep track of as many conversations as I do.
Below is another map, showing on-line spaces where I've been connecting with others and sharing my own ideas.
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-InfluencingChange
In both of these I included the graphic shown below, to illustrate the idea of our journey through time, or through social media, and how I purposefully try to attract others to follow me and the ideas I share on this blog, so more people are helping tutor/mentor programs grow in more places, and are helping each of those programs constantly find ways to expand their own influence.
I'm just one person, and thus my ability to attract others is limited. However, if many of us were trying to do this, we could build a growing army of followers and collaborators who work to help kids move through school and into careers.
Let me show this a bit differently. One group that I've been connecting with since 2013 is composed of educators located throughout the United States and in other countries. This is the Connected Learning group, using hashtag #clmooc.
On any day you can click into the #clmooc link and follow the discussion thread to see what members are talking about. Or you can go to the group's web site, and find archives of past Twitter chats, a link to a G+ community, or announcements of upcoming activities. Kevin Hodgson, a middle school teacher from Western Massachusetts, does a nice job summarizing a recent #clmooc chat on his blog.
This morning when I looked at my Twitter feed I found the post below, from Terry Elliott, a college professor from Western Kentucky.
If you click into the video you'll see that Terry created an analysis of my activity within the #clmooc Twitter universe during one recent week. He was aided by Sarah Honeychurch, who works at the University of Glasggow, in Scotland. The analysis is done using #TAGS, a free tool made available by Martin Hawksey, who is also from Scotland.
I would not know of these tools if I were not regularly following this group on Twitter.
I created this graphic several years ago to illustrate how difficult it is to figure out ways to reach kids with the help and support the each need so that more are moving safely and successfully through K-12 education and into adult lives. Reaching kids in high poverty neighborhoods with programs that provide this support for many years, is an even greater challenge.
That's why we need to be connecting and learning from each other and why I'm on Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook daily. It's why I go to meetings and conferences in Chicago (when they are free). It's why I've been building a web library and sharing ideas from it for over 20 years.
Unfortunately, only a small number of the people who are involved with Chicago's volunteer-based tutor and mentor programs are actively engaged on Twitter. Only handful of the people in my Facebook and Linkedin "friends" lists are using Twitter. Very few of the volunteers and students who have been part of the tutoring programs I led from 1975-2011 are using Twitter, or are actively using Facebook and/or Linkedin.
Or, they are actively using these spaces but have not reached out to connect with me or invite me to connect with them.
Tomorrow starts a new week. I'll continue my journey through social media. I hope you'll join me in one of these spaces or in one or more of these Twitter #hashtag conversations. I'll be updating the #hashtag map on a regular basis as I'm drawn into new conversations.
Last Saturday I posted an article about a proposed Chicago violence prevention jobs program, which included this graphic. The two elements of the graphic are 1) support for kids in high poverty neighborhoods needs to start when kids are young and stay connected to them as the move through school and into jobs; and 2) we need to be using maps to focus on where help is most needed and to show where services and resources are available, and where more are needed.
On Tuesday I listened to JB Pritzker introduce himself during a ChiHackNight event (see video). A few weeks earlier Ameya Pawar (see video) also spoke to the group. This prompted me to create a new concept map, showing each of the candidates for Governor of Illinois (that I know of) with a link to the issues page on their web sites.
Open links with each node. Use as on-going resource. Duplicate in other states.
This map not only points to the web sites of the candidates, but also points to two sections of the web library I've been building since 1998. In one section I've been aggregating links to web sites that focus on progressive issues and on engaging more people in the voting process. In a second section I point to a set of links focused on collaboration and community building, and knowledge management, creativity and innovation.
My goal is that the candidates, and many others, take on the role of the blue box in this graphic, connecting people throughout Illinois with information they share on their web sites, and encouraging on-going discussion and deeper learning so people are better informed about the problems of the state, as well as potential solutions.
Other elements on the map, in the lower right corner, are two of my concept maps, showing roles leaders need to take, making a long-term commitment to do all they can to help every youth born or living in a poverty zip code of Illinois be starting a job and a career by the time they are in their mid 20's.
Doing "all you can" involves enlisting other leaders to take the same role. It also involves a constant effort to get more people looking at this information and learning ways they, too, can get involved. You don't need to be a candidate for Governor to take this role.
If each of these candidates points people to the information in this concept map, and encourages them to give time, talent and dollars to support youth serving organizations throughout the state, they then could put their picture in the graphic below, showing what they are doing every day throughout the year to build attention and draw a growing volume of volunteers, talent, ideas and operating dollars, directly to every youth program active in the state.
A few years ago I created a video following the election of Rahm Emanuel as Mayor of Chicago. It was titled "Imagine This..." and pretended that the new Mayor were writing this blog, and/or narrating that video. I'm not a video maker, so this is pretty poor quality. That means anyone reading this could say "I can do that better", and then go ahead and create their own version.
Go ahead. Do it. Send me your version. Better yet, if you work with one of these campaigns. create your own video, with your candidate pointing to this information.
How much would it cost to create a jobs program that employs 32,656 men who live in the highest violence plagued Chicago neighborhoods. These are men who are are at the highest risk of being a victim and/or offender. That is the question WBEZ reporter Chip Mitchell attempts to answer with this analysis.
His answer: $1.1 billion, for the program's first year. However, as he writes:
But, just for context, it’s around the planned cost of redeveloping Union Station downtown. It’s also roughly what Illinois spends to keep its violent offenders in prison for one year.
I was interviewed for this project, about the cost of mentoring this population, and encouraged Chip to step back and think of the systems needed to reach and employ this group. I also told him how much I appreciated being asked for my thoughts, since so few leaders in Chicago have ever reached out to me in the past 30 years as they were planning new youth development initiatives.
I think Chip has done a comprehensive analysis, with the aid of Joseph Persky, a University of Illinois at Chicago economist. However, I think there are many other things that need to be considered in determining a price tag and launching this effort.
Take a look at the graphic below:
I think it will be easy for WBEZ to create maps that show the neighborhoods they are targeting. They already do a great job of creating similar maps and posting them on their web site.
In the above graphic, the map at the left shows neighborhoods targeted by an anti violence initiative launched by the Mayor's office in 2013. The map at the right shows all poverty areas in Chicago. I used these maps in a 2013 article to emphasize the need for funding youth tutor/mentor programs in other neighborhoods, not just the target areas.
Above the maps is a birth-to-work graphic, emphasizing the need for funding and volunteer support of youth programs that reach kids early and stay connected, with age appropriate support all the way until they are in jobs and careers. The yellow highlight shows the age group of men that the WBEZ write up targets. The pink bar shows what's not included. Furthermore, since this project only focuses on men in the age 16-34 age group, there will be additional costs to employ women in these areas.
This project is important, and needs to be tried. However, unless funding supports boys and girls in all poverty areas, and all age groups, I think we'll be paying this $1 billion or more every year into infinity because we've not fixed the pipeline. I also believe we'll also still be paying many of the costs of poverty and incarceration that the project seeks to reduce. The additional costs of making mentor-rich programs available to youth and every poverty area has not been calculated.
Even if we only focus on the WBEZ target group and neighborhoods, there's still more to think about. Take a look at this graphic.
I've used this graphic in many articles, such as this one. Whoever takes the lead on this project needs to put together a planning map, that takes into consideration everything from Step 1 to Step 7 on this graphic. And Step 7 will be the most difficult. That's the one that focuses on building and sustaining the public will to fund this project, not for one year, but for many years.
Does the funding analysis cover the costs of this planning process?
Here's another consideration. This 4-part strategy map can be viewed at this link, and is described in this presentation.
The WBEZ article, and all the research that went into creating the analysis, would be included in Step 1, which is the information we use to understand a situation and look at possible solutions.
What I think is missing from the WBEZ analysis of cost is Step 2 and Step 3. What type of on-going advertising and public education will be needed, over many years, to draw enough leaders from business, philanthropy, government and non profits together to build the public will to fund this project and keep it funded? What type of on-going outreach will be needed to reach and involve those 32,000 men who are the focus of this project?
WBEZ posting this article on their web site, then sharing it on social media where I and others could find it and give it more readership through our own Tweets, likes and re-tweets is one part the strategies I focus on in Step 2 and 3. Me writing this article and sharing it often on social media and in my email newsletter, is another. These actions will need to happen over and over, for many years, with many others writing their own blog articles, to make sense of the project and to attract more and more who take a similar role.
I don't know the answer to the questions I'm posting, but do know that this planning could benefit from some additional systems thinking and process mapping, so the full project is better understood by more people, and the full cost can be better determined. To focus attention on the strategy map I created a new video to highlight the four sections of the map. I hope you'll take time to view it.
I've been using visualizations and concept maps for nearly 20 years to help people understand the ideas I have been sharing, show the information I've been aggregating, and demonstrate a process that I feel needs to be adopted by many leaders, if we're to build the public will needed to solve the violence and reduce the poverty and inequality that's embedded in Chicago.
I know this is another long article, but here's one more set of ideas that I hope you'll read. These articles focus on systems thinking, and mapping. They demonstrate a process and show some tools that I hope WBEZ and others will apply to help build involvement and support for comprehensive, long-term solutions.
I hope I can be included in the planning, brainstorming and thinking that is needed. Unfortunately, that's not often been the case in past years. However, we're focusing on the future, so I'd be happy to spend time with city leaders, and planners, to talk through the ideas I share in this and other articles on this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.
I've used graphics like this often to visualize a system of youth supports that starts at pre-school and continues until a young person is in a job and taking on adult responsibilities. While we spend billions as a nation to help people who live in poverty many programs only focus on pieces of the problem, not the entire pipeline. If there's a gap in support, the pipe leaks. In many cases this can be life changing if kids get drawn into gangs, drugs, or other negative habits.
As we enjoy this 4th of July weekend and think of the blessings that most Americans enjoy, I hope you'll take a few moments to think of ways you can use your time, talent, leadership, dollars, influence and votes to create a support system that makes more of these blessings available to everyone in America and to others around the world.
This "mentoring kids to careers" graphic is a different version of the pipeline, but emphasizes the same points. At each age group kids need specific types of support to help them move to the next age level. Most kids living outside of extreme poverty and segregated neighborhoods, and in smaller cities and towns, have more of these supports available to them than do kids living in high poverty areas of big cities.
This is a third version of the same idea. In this case I use "oil well" as a symbol for the birth to work support kids need. I posted these on a map of Chicago, where the darker red areas are neighborhoods of high poverty where this type of support systems needs to be created and sustained for many years. One role researchers can take is to create asset maps of different zip codes to identify support programs that are available and find ways to help them do good work. Such maps can also show gaps in service that need to be filled, which are where the "pipeline" is broken.
The graphic below combines some of these elements. At the right is another graphic showing the birth to work support system, along with a map emphasizing a need for support to be available in all high poverty areas. To the right I focus on building and sustaining public will to make this happen, and the need to influence people who don't live in poverty, as well as those who operate the schools and non-profits that need to become available to more kids and families in more places.
If you open the links on the graphic above, which are the small boxes under each node, you'll find other articles that feature these graphics in more detail.
As you're enjoying the holiday, I hope you'll take some time to look at this, and bookmark the page, so in coming weeks you can dig deeper into these ideas and share them with friends, family, co-workers, alumni and others who also are celebrating this weekend.
While I've written articles like this for many years, many leaders are needed to re-frame this message and evangelize it in more places to more people. Leaders who champion and spread these ideas could be students in middle school, high school, college and/or Phd students. They could be faith leaders, business leaders, athletes, rappers, even politicians.
Share links to articles you post with these ideas, in the comment box, or on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.
Here's how to use this blog. Each article includes graphics. Click on them to get enlarged versions. Each article has many links (which are often broken on older articles). Open the links to dig deeper in the ideas and strategies I share. On the left side are tags which you can click to find articles that focus on the same topic. Below that are links to other web sites with relevant information. Learn more about me at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/dan-bassill.
I combine 17 years of retail advertising, 3 years in Army Intelligence and 40 years of leading site-based tutor/mentor programs, the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Few people in the US have a similar depth of involvement and experiences.
I describe my work as information-based problem solving and host a library of my own ideas plus links to more than 2000 other sites which people can use to build and sustain volunteer-based non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs in high poverty areas.
You meet me in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or other links shown below.
We launched the T/MC with four strategies which are shown in this concept map. These need to be taking place within each individual tutor/mentor program, and at each resource provider, as well as in intermediary organizations.
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