What are issues facing next President?

I hope the next President of the USA is Kamala Harris, with Tim Walz as her VP.  That won't happen unless there's a massive voter turnout.

Let's assume she is elected.  What are the issues she needs to address?  

I created the concept map shown below just before Joe Biden took office, showing issues he needed to address. I updated it this week. Much of the same issues are still there.  

You can view this map at this link.

I've been using cMapTools to create my concept maps since 2005.  However, I've seen other mapping tools emerge, that might do the job as well, or better.  Since I have so much time invested in keeping my concept maps on-line, and updated (as much as possible), I've not tried to recreate any of my maps on another platform.

However, I've encouraged others to do that.  In a July 2024 article I showed some examples of visualizations made using KUMU.io.  In other articles, like this one, I've showed use of NodeXL.  

In this article, and several others, I shared a video by Gene Bellinger, who is a systems thinking expert who I've followed for over a dozen years, mostly via LinkedIn.  What's special about Gene is that he is narrating some of the maps he has created, to help others build a better understanding.  

In many of these articles I've added additional links, as updates, after the original article was written. 

In this December 2022 article I used the graphic below, and a collection of concept maps, to show strategies I hoped the White House STEMM task force would adopt to create and share a strategy that might achieve their goals by 2050.

Below is one of many examples of how I've encouraged leaders to use my blog and website as a resource to develop their own strategies.

I saw an @Esri blog article about @GovTimWalz using GIS #maps and shared it in this article on my blog. https://t.co/HnYpzoMgev

I show my own love of GIS since 1993 & how I've tried to use it to draw resources to high poverty areas. pic.twitter.com/x8AlnoLCMt

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) August 10, 2024

So today I was thrilled when my KUMU contact on Twitter shared a presentation from Senator Elizabeth Warren's 2016 presidential campaign, using KUMU to show her strategy for "Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages".   

That graphic looks really crowded. Even more so than some of the concept maps I make.  However, that's the final slide in her presentation.  View the presentation at this link.

You'll see that she breaks this information into small bits, using the features of KUMU to enable you to zoom in to specific information. It starts with data quantifying the problem she's trying to fix, with traditional text, bar charts, and links to external pages. 

This is the first slide, after the pages showing the problem.  You can click on any of the elements and information will be shown in the left hand side, and right on the map.  

Here's another slide that illustrates how information can be presented.

The strategy is presented in a text narrative at this link.  It does not take long to skim through the slides and see the potential of using concept maps this way.  Of course, if you're really interested in the topic,  you'll want to dig deeper and follow the links to even more information.  

Now take another look at my concept map showing issues facing our next President.  Note that my headline says, "Can anyone visualize all of the issues that POTUS47 needs to address? 

Each cluster on the map represents one major issue, with several sub-issues.  Each could be communicated using KUMU in much the same way as the Senator Warren presentation.  

For instance, today I read a Hechinger Report article titled "What education could look like under Harris and Walz".  It's pretty comprehensive.  What if it had a KUMU version, too.

Here's the fun thing.  All of this work doesn't need to be done by one person, or one organization.  Imagine teams of volunteers from industry, education, etc. coming together in on-line spaces to create maps for each sub category, then adding them to a master map, with just a link.

Concept maps that link to external sites, or other maps, can provide a constantly-expanded field of ideas and information. 

Here's an example. At the center of my concept map you see the information shown below.

The node on the left opens an external website. Often, a page in my library, where I aggregate links to websites that focus on specific topics. 

The node on the right opens another concept map.  Thus, anyone can create a map that aggregates links to maps created by other people.  Many people could do that!  

If you look at my collection of concept maps, you'll see links like this in almost all of them.   

I think there are thousands of experts who have greater knowledge of these subjects than I do, who may already be communicating their ideas this way.  If my maps can help stimulate your thinking, use them.

Please connect with me on social media and share your own maps and ideas.  This page has links to where you can find me.

If you share links to your maps with me, maybe I'll add them to my blog articles and/or library!

And, if you're able, please make a contribution to help me pay the bills and keep doing this work.   Visit this page. 

Mapping Participation - An Example

A few weeks ago I posted an article showing uses of concept maps to visualize complex problems and understand the range of people who were connecting with each other in specific places to solve specific problems. 

I've been interested in mapping participation, as part of building networks, for more than 20 years.  Today I was prompted to review two blog articles created in 2010 by a graduate of DePaul University to understand participation in May and November 2009 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, which I had been hosting in Chicago, every six months since May1994.  

In one of the articles I saw this map.

This SNA map shows conference attendees from different tutor/mentor programs for the May 2009 and November 2009 conferences.  The programs are color-coded on the basis of poverty levels in that zip code.  The map shows that attendees were from a wide spectrum of poverty regions.

I hope you'll read these 2010 articles and see how people organizing events might map participation as part of an on-going planning and network building process.

Sadly, my volunteer was only able to work with us for a short time and I never found another volunteer (or funding) to build on this work.

Around 2014 I was able to create a couple of maps showing participation in 1998 and 2008 conferences.  The graphic below shows the 1998 conference participation.

Visit this page and find an interactive map that you can ZOOM into and learn more about who participated.  

In 2014 a team of graduate students from Indiana University looked at participation lists for every conference from 1994 to 2014. My hope was that they would build SNA maps and stories that built on the work done in 2010.  This article has links to the reports they created. This is another article that talks about their work.

One of the products of the IU team was this map, showing 1994 to 2014 participation from across the USA. 

Open this page and view the map.  Zoom in to see participation from the Chicago area and other places.

Each of these projects did part of what I was hoping to achieve, but not all. None lasted beyond one cycle of student involvement.  Yet, they are examples of what is possible.

Here's another article that shows what I've tried to accomplish. 

This concept map shows organizations in Chicago and beyond who serve as intermediaries, connecting networks of youth serving organizations to information and each other.  

What none of my concept maps show is, "How are they connecting to each other?", or "How frequently do they connect?", or "How many years have they been connecting with each other, and in what types of formats?"

There's also a lot of missing information.  If you look at my conference maps, or the SNA analysis done in 2010, you won't see much, if any, participation from business, political leaders, media, funders, researchers or others who need to be involved in long-term efforts to build and sustain programs that help kids in high poverty areas move from birth-to-work, or in solving any other complex problem.

Here's an article where I apply this thinking to building STEM learning opportunities for youth in all high poverty areas.  It includes the concept map shown below.

This map shows the range of networks and organizations who need to be seriously involved in any long-term problem solving or opportunity development.  If you're missing some of these, it's more difficult to do the work needed, or draw attention and funding to sustain it.

Someone needs to be collecting the data, doing the analysis, and sharing the information, within each problem solving sector, to show who's involved, how are they interacting with each other, and "who's missing" that needs to be recruited.

Maybe they are and I've not yet learned about their work.  If you're aware of such groups, please share in the comments below.  Open this page of the Tutor/Mentor library and see what I have learned is available. 

One more concept map. This visualizes a comprehensive, informed, planning process.

Open the links in the nodes at the bottom of each element on the map to read articles or find more about what this map is communicating.  On the right side it shows a goal of helping kids through school and on the left, it shows the need to influence what resource providers and business do to help.

Step 7 on the concept map focuses on "Building Public Commitment" to fund and sustain the work for many years.   While I was able to do much over the past 30 years, in the end, my inability to find sustained funding, or enough funding, lessened my impact. 

I think this is a problem for many who are trying to draw people together to solve problems.

This week the Democratic National Convention is taking place in Chicago.  I'm watching. I've made a small contribution.

Like you, I'm receiving dozens of appeals daily for more donations, to the national campaign, and to state and local campaigns throughout the country.

Billions of dollars are being raised and spent, just to get people elected.

Imagine if just a fraction of that were spent to support the planning process I describe in my articles, and have piloted in Chicago, and that this led to millions of dollars of consistent, flexible funding going into high poverty areas to support ALL efforts that help youth, families and schools rise from poverty to hope and opportunity (not just high profile efforts, or high visibility areas).

A step toward achieving that goal is building a database of stakeholders, then establishing a communications channel to them, and to each other.  Then inviting people to connect in face-to-face events, and on-line events.  Then doing an on-going analysis of "who's involved" and "how are they connecting" as part of "how can we strengthen the network" and "do better each year at solving the problems we are trying to solve.

Then repeating this for 20 to 30 years. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll share this and that it inspires a few people in different places to want to add my ideas and archives to their own thinking.

I'm on social media. Please follow. Let's connect. - find links on this page.

I'm also running out of money and hope that a few of you will visit this page and help fund the work I'm doing. 

Sharing the successes we each have. My 1995 vision.

Below is text of a letter I wrote in June 1995, to the Executive Director of the COMPACT youth program, in Orlando, Florida.  It shows what I was doing then, and what still needs to be happening in 2024 and beyond.  

Is someone in your community taking this role?

---- begin 1995 letter ----

"One of the most important lessons we've learned is how extraordinarily isolated are people and groups which share common goals and vision." said Rebecca Riely of Chicago's John D. and Catherine M. MacArthur Foundation at a 1995 city forum.

The 1994 Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) survey of 200 Chicago tutor/mentor programs reported similar findings.  More than half the 120 programs who responded had "little or no contact with others doing similar work."  

What Ms. Riely did not say is that reducing isolation requires a commitment to gather and share information.  While there are many who collect and library data, there are few who work to give this data life by serving as a match-maker between good ideas and good people.  The T/MC was formed in 1993 to serve this role among tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, and as we've been doing this, we are learning from good programs around the country, while also sharing what work is being done here.

In the 20 years I've been leading a tutoring program in Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing area, no city, state, national organization or major foundation, has ever established a consistent outreach into Chicago's neighborhoods to learn what tutor/mentor programs were operating, where they were, or what they were doing, nor to approach them with a "How can I help you succeed?" attitude. Nor has there been any concentrated or consistent effort to identify which neighborhoods are underserved, either through lack of programs, or lack of programs for a specific age group, then to develop and lead a marketing program which would fill those gaps.

The founders of Cabrini Connections and the T/MC had these conditions in mind in the fall of 1992 when Cabrini Connections was organized. While keeping a commitment to serve teens in Cabrini-Green (through an afterschool program we operated at the Montgomery Ward national headquarters), the T/MC branch of Cabrini Connections was formed to reduce this isolation through active research and information-sharing efforts, linking tutor/mentor program throughout Chicago, and America, and by linking networks of related service providers, such as Science Linkages in the Community, The Chicago Bar Association and the Illinois Intergenerational Initiative, with individual programs and groups of programs.

I don't think anyone has a monopoly on the answers to the problems of our inner cities, but I do think we can get there by sharing the successes we each have.  In addition, I'm not sure that by ourselves we can continue to build our programs over the generation it will take to succeed in the neighborhoods we serve, but by supporting each other, we can build the will-power to keep our work going along with the new resources of people, brains, money and energy that long-term growth must have to be successful.

When the T/MC reaches out to programs its goal is to learn about the organizational structure and workings of different programs, with the goal of including that information in the T/MC library, and sharing it with programs in Chicago.  

Following are some questions we tried to find answers to:

* Where do mentors meet with students?
* What training (orientation, initial, on-going) do mentors receive? Can you share samples of your training materials?
* How do you communicate with mentors (newsletter, etc.?)
* What contact records do you keep? How do you audit the frequency of contact between a tutor/mentor and a student?  For example, if you have 100 pairs, and a 50 week schedule, are you able to show a contact frequency of 100%? 80%?
* What screening do you do? What is the cost? Who pays?
* How long, on average, do volunteer tutors and/or mentors stay with your program?
* Are other nonprofits in your city providing similar services?  If so, do you network with them?
* How do you evaluate the program? What methodology do you use to quantify program results?
* Do you have studies that quantify the effect of mentoring that can be shared? Getting good hard documentation is difficult, but it is what business needs to see to invest in these types of programs.

I've asked a lot of questions, but I operate a program, and these are questions I deal with every day in making Cabrini Connections succeed. For us to increase the reach and effect of programs like ours to thousands of children across America, program managers are going to need to learn from each other, and to document the outcomes in a manner that can draw funds to keep programs growing.

--- end June 1995 ----

The survey the T/MC used in 1994 and through 2009 can be viewed in this PDF.  

Why Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection? - read what I wrote in 1993 - click here

Every article posted on this blog since 2005, and in our printed newsletters since 1993, has focused on this "How can we do this better?" question. 

I've used maps, and pointed to research, that shows that there are pockets of concentrated, persistent poverty in every major city in America, as well as in rural areas and on reservations.  These are places where other leaders could be learning from my own efforts, and my library, to build their own information-based intermediary, to achieve the same goals we set when we launched Cabrini-Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection in late 1992.

I've a collection of articles showing roles universities could take, which you can browse at this link.  

I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 in an effort to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection available in Chicago, and help similar intermediaries grow in other cities.  This was after the Board of Directors at Cabrini Connections voted to no longer support the strategy, and focus only on our single kids' program.  

I've managed, barely, to do this. 

If you've read what I wrote in 1995 and see the need for this work to continue, share my work and help recruit leaders who will reach out to me, to take ownership of my archive and strategies, and turn them into teaching tools, to help future leaders.

Connect with me on social media, to share what I'm doing and share what YOU are doing.

And, visit this page and make a small contribution to help me keep doing this work for another year, or more. 

VP Candidate Tim Walz and GIS Maps

I invite you to go over to my Mapping For Justice blog and read about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's long history with GIS maps.  click here

This article includes a link to an ESRI blog article that provides a great overview of Walz's  history with maps.  

This means a lot to me, since my history goes back to 1993 when I began to learn about GIS mapping.  In 1995 ESRI donated software that the Tutor/Mentor Connection used to make maps from then until 2011.

Below is an image showing a collection of map stories, created since 1995, using donated ESRI software, and using the interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator which was built for the Tutor/Mentor Connection by a team from India in 2008.  See it in this article. 

I wish I'd connected with Tim Walz 20 year ago. Maybe I'd still be hosting this mapping resource and maybe more leaders would be using maps the way I've described in dozens of articles, to point resources to places where people need extra help.

I've two sets of links in the Tutor/Mentor library to pages where I show uses of GIS maps.  This page, and this page.  

Any leader, in any city or state, could use my library as part of their own research and development information base.  I keep adding to it.  For instance, I added links to the ESRI article and the Minnesota Mapping page yesterday.

I hope someone will introduce my blog to Gov Tim Walz once he becomes Vice President Tim Walz, and that he will champion this use of maps throughout the country and provide the resources organizations need to not only create maps, but create on-going stories that draw more viewers to the maps and the information they share, then to places where the maps show people need more help. 

This was me in the mid 1990s, using a map from a Chicago Tribune story, to emphasize the need to help kids in every high poverty area of Chicago.  I wish I had a collection of similar photos, where the person in the photo was one of our former mayors or governors.

If you know of others with great mapping resources connect with me on social media. Visit this page to find links to where I'm active.

If you value the information I'm sharing please visit this page and send a contribution to help me pay the bills.  Thank you. 

Adopt this 4-part strategy to help kids in YOUR community

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 a 10-step plan, which we condensed to four strategies by 1995. These are shown in this concept map.  They 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.

Read about the Tutor/Mentor Connection do-over.  Look at this PDF and see the value of the information being collected.   

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 tutormentor1 at gmail.com.

Click here to see where you can find me on social media.


I've funded the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011 with the help of a small group of donors and by depleting my own savings.  Now, I'm beginning to have health issues and need to use some of these donations to help pay these expenses. 

Please visit this page and make a contribution.  Thank you.