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| Chicago SunTimes |
There actually has been a lot of progress. Shootings deaths are almost half as many as there were in the early 1990s. Yet, there still are too many.
I've focused on developing volunteer-based non-school tutor/mentor programs as part of the solution because they have a direct impact on young people and because they draw people who don't live in poverty into direct, and sometimes, long-term involvement.
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| See print newsletters |
I've used maps showing poverty areas of Chicago along with graphics showing comprehensive long-term actions that need to be applied in many places. Many of these focus on ways to communicate strategies that I feel would address some of the root causes of violence, and the need to build a greater public will to support comprehensive solutions in more places.
In 2005 I began to use concept maps to communicate ideas. Below is one that I created for this 2015 article.
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| View map - click here |
At the right I point to many issues that challenge people living in high poverty areas. On the left I repeat the "mentoring kids to careers graphic" to emphasize that these issues need to be addressed with age appropriate services repeated for many years and available in every high poverty neighborhood .
Getting extra people involved to help solve these problems is one way a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program can add value.
Below is another map from my library. This focuses on planning needed to identify and build solutions in different sections of the city and suburbs. I used it in this article and many others that focus on planning.
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| Two maps to look at: 1) planning cycle 2) planning needed |
Let's look at just one more concept map. If you follow the lines from the blue box in the middle it shows a commitment that anyone can make to help kids born or living in poverty be starting jobs and careers by age 25. If you open the small boxes at the bottom of each node, you find even more maps, or other websites, with more information.
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| Strategy map - click here |
As I followed this week's Democratic Presidential Candidate debates I wished that one or more of these leaders, and other leaders, would adopt the strategy shown in this map, putting their picture and logo in the blue box. In doing so they are saying that they constantly are trying to draw more people to this map, so they will dig into the information it contains and so they will then make their own commitment.
My wish is that they already had been doing this for many past years so that if elected President they would just have a larger influence on what other people do. If anyone reading this has found something like these maps on the website of any candidate, please share the link. Invitation open to GOP, too.
There could be thousands of versions of this strategy map.... from political leaders, sports celebrities, business, faith, college and hospital leaders, etc. Versions of this could be found in every public and private school in America. That certainly would turn my small voice into a roar!
You just need to share this and try to help make it happen.
Read more. In the four part strategy set of articles you can read more about this strategy map.
The list at the left side of the blog offers a navigation through articles on this blog. I've been pulling articles from past years into new blogs, just to give new attention to them. You can do the same if you find an article that you like. Post it on Twitter, Facebook or in your own blog.
Stopping violence in Chicago will take the efforts of many people for many years. Take a role.
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