Help Fund This Work

At the end of many of my articles I have a request, asking for readers to make contributions to help Fund the work I do to collect and share information that helps kids in high poverty areas connect with volunteers in organized tutor, mentor and learning programs.

Open this link and you'll find the page shown below. 

With your help I can continue.

 If someone you know has become ill and needs money to pay bills, they set up a "Go Fund Me" page and ask for contributions. They are not 501-c-3 non profits. They are people needing help.

The Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is not operating as a non profit either. However, it's also not a profit-making business. So, this is my "fund me" page. I (Daniel Bassill) have been self-funding this work since 2011, supported by a small group of continuing donors.

Please add your support.  Send a contribution of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500 or more to help me continue in 2024, 2025 and beyond.

Thank you.

Remembering 9/11 - How much sacrifice is enough?

Today people in the USA and friends from around the world are pausing for a few moments to remember the lives lost in the 9/11 tragedy and in the 24-year war on terrorism that has taken place sense then.

I add my prayers of hope and remembrance to the families of those directly, and indirectly, affected by these events. 

However, I would like to go a step further.

I'd like to ask everyone to dig a bit deeper and to find a little more time to try to understand the poverty in the world that is a breeding ground for these events. While nature causes hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and floods, it is poverty that gives us the images of desperate people in affected areas.

While it is a small group of fanatics fanning the fire of terrorism, it is poverty that provides recruits for these fanatics.

Thus, it's poverty we need to understand and deal with.

While the US focuses on the tragedy unfolding in different parts of the world, I keep thinking of what will be needed for decades to help people in these areas recover from these disasters.

Since 2005 I've written a few articles following natural disasters. They all have the same pace. Urgent need and huge attention and outpouring of help as the tragedy unfolds.  Few using maps, so many areas where help is needed get little attention. In the years following one tragedy another happens and attention goes to a new crisis. Keeping attention and resources flowing five, 10 and 15 years after the tragedy is almost impossible.

That same flow of attention follows urban violence.

I've been reducing my paper trail and am scanning some of my news stories into my computer. Added this one from 1993, which is a letter to the editor written to the Chicago Tribune by Florence Cox, President of the Chicago Board of Education

I highlighted one section where she says:

"We must begin to realize that the needs of Chicago-area children are not being met, and in neglecting those needs, we neglect our own future as a prosperous and safe city."

Here's another article with some quotes from other stories, showing how difficult it is for this nation to focus on complex problems that require long-term attention and resources to be solved.

The headline is, "Action, not apologies, would help."

When I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 one of four strategies was to generate more consistent attention to issues of poverty, violence, inequality, etc. drawing needed support to all of the non-school tutor/mentor programs operating in the Chicago region. I started using maps to show where they were most needed and where existing programs are located.  

I found another set of notes, with quotes I'd written down during speeches given during the 1997 President's Summit for America's Future, held in Philadelphia, PA.  I was there as a delegate from Chicago and as a Teaching Example exhibitor.

It starts with a quote from President Bill Clinton, saying, "This is the start of an era of big citizenship. The really important work will begin after my talk's over".  Click on the image to enlarge it and read the other quotes.

In the letter to the editor and in the Summit speeches, leaders are calling on Americans to become involved in solving complex problems.  The problem is, they have not made this call for people's involvement every day since then, and they have not pointed to web libraries and directories showing information people need to learn from, and lists of existing programs who need their help.

That's still a problem.

As I listened to Vice President Kamala Harris end last night's debate, I heard the same call for involvement.  I hope people look back 20 years from now and see this as a tipping point in how we solve problems in the world. 

I've tried to model what needs to be done, by my own actions and those of the Tutor/Mentor Connect ion (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present).  I've had limited resources to do this, but continue with what I have.

Look at articles in the history, archive, about TMI sections at the left, to see what I've been trying to do.  

I keep hoping to find others who will help me...and will help provide the consistent attention needed to support people and organizations working with kids in all places where they are needed. I invite disaster recovery leaders, anti poverty leaders, education and workforce development leaders, and others, to borrow ideas from my archives and my library and apply them in their own work.

In this context, the next question is "how much time, talent and treasure" should one be expected to commit to this war on poverty? In the speeches that will be given today we'll honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. The number of dead will be totaled. In the background will be the number of families and children changed forever because a parent was lost in 9/11 or killed or severely wounded in the years since then.

When we think of this as 100% sacrifice, how do our own daily commitments of time, talent and treasure stack up? I'm not in a position to say what the appropriate level of giving should be. However, I can look in my own mirror every night and feel good about my own efforts.

I'd like to find a way that more people were looking in the mirror every night and doing more than just staring at a pretty face!!

This week and next week volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs will be holding orientations and training sessions for the volunteers who will become tutors/mentors in the 2024-25 school year.  I hope this will be starting them on a journey that is intended to stretch their involvement beyond two hours a week with one youth, to a commitment that draws the heart, body and spirit of a growing number into the efforts it takes to end poverty by helping kids move through school and into jobs/careers, and ending some of the harms that I point to in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

In the program I led from 1993 to 2011 we promised our kids "we'll do everything we can" to assure that you're starting a job/career by age 25. "Everything" is a lot. It's unconditional effort. It recognizes the potential of unleashing the talent of our volunteers, their friends and families, the people they work with, and the people they pray with or go to football games with, in efforts to end poverty and provide hope.

I'm now seeing stories on Facebook from some of these kids showing their college degrees and the journey of their own kids through school.  The year-to-year evidence could not show this result, but our ability to keep kids coming back each year through high school, was a prediction.

Visit this section of my library and find links to Chicago youth programs. Visit their websites. Look at their social media posts. Learn what they do, then decide how, and how much, you want to help them. Don't wait for a proposal, or to be asked.  Take the lead. Reach out to them.

Our efforts to unleash and focus more of the talents and time of our students, alumni and volunteers are the best memorial to 9/11 that I feel we can offer.

Thanks for reading.  Please connect with me on social media and share my posts so more people get t his information.

And, if you're able, send a contribution to help fund this work. Visit this page. 

Mapping Birth-to-Work Strategies

 I've used visualizations like the one below for more than 20 years to show the need for long-term, birth-to-work strategies, that reach K-12 youth in every high poverty area of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

I included this graphic in this July 2018 article titled "After the march, do the planning".   It's one of more than 200 articles posted on this blog that focus on "violence" prevention and "planning".  My goal is that youth and adults from around the USA are are reading these articles and sharing their interpretations with friends, family and co-workers to help mentor-rich birth-to-work programs grow in every high poverty area of Chicago and other parts of the country.

You can look at the graphic above in several ways.

1) It includes a map, showing high poverty areas of Chicago. Programs that help kids through school and into adult lives need to be in every one of these zip codes.

2) The horizontal arrow shows the "birth-to-work" timeline, which takes 20-25 years for EVERY youth. Those in high poverty areas don't have the same range of natural support that kids in more affluent areas have, so those supports need to be made available through school and no-school hours programming.  I wrote this article focusing on some of the needed programming. 

3) You can also think of the graphic as a guide to investments needed.  Since the arrow, and the graphic above, shows stages kids grow through as they move from "birth-to-work", communities need to innovate ways to drive needed operating dollars, technology, talent and ideas into every high poverty neighborhood, making age appropriate programs available at each stage on the timeline.  Furthermore, at the right end of the arrow these supports need to be job training, interviews and JOBS!

Maps need to be use for multiple purposes. They can show demographic and poverty data as layers of information, pointing to places where people need extra help. 

They can show access routes through neighborhoods which might help volunteers see more places where they can connect with youth in organized programs.

They can show locations of programs, and potential support, such as banks, colleges, hospitals, faith groups, etc. We created a Chicago tutor/mentor Program Locator in 2004 and updated it in 2008 to enable people to create a map view showing small sections of the city, that could be used in planning.  It's now an archive due to lack of continued funding. 

Maps can also show who's involved, as these Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference maps demonstrate.  

Most importantly, maps can show a distribution of dollars and involvement.  Foundations,  companies and government programs have the ability to create maps that show where their dollars are landing, and/or where company volunteers are involved as board members, or volunteers serving as tutors, mentors, tech support or marketing and fund raising support.  

But there are also other types of maps that planners should be using.  View the concept map shown in the graphic below at this link.  It shows supports needed at each grade level, in EVERY high poverty area of Chicago and other places.

Here's another concept map to look at.  It shows challenges facing people in high poverty areas. While building great school and non-school programs is needed, removing the barriers enables these schools to have greater success.

Now, take a look at maps created with systems mapping tools like KUMU.

I've posted several articles showing how planners can use tools like KUMU.  On LinkedIn I found this post, by KUMU, showing a planning process focused on family violence in Victoria, Canada.  Open the project map at this link.   

Look at other examples that I've posted in these articles, including one showing how Senator Elizabeth Warren used a KUMU map in her 2016 Presidential campaign to show her strategy for empowering American workers and raising wages.    

Using GIS maps to show where help is needed and systems maps to help understand a problem and potential solutions, and guide resources to places where help is needed, can lead to new and better implementation of solutions.

So far I can find too few examples of maps being used this way, thus, there is little accountability assuring that funds and resources support all stages of the "birth-to-work" timeline, in every zip code where such programs are needed.

I no longer have the organizational capacity to update the program locator and implement these ideas. Instead, I want to be part of planning teams who read these articles and are trying to innovate ways to implement them in different locations.

In this article I show my 30 year history of reaching out to universities, and my continued goal that one, or many, universities begin doing the work that I describe in this and other blog articles.

As places with a brick-and-mortar investment in communities and a pipeline of students coming from high school to college, then on into adult lives and careers, universities are uniquely able to adopt long-term planning, if donors will provide long-term funding!

If you're doing this work, please use my resources and archives and invite me to help you make sense of it all!

I'm on these social media channels. If you're interested in knowing more and starting a conversation, just reach out to me.

If you want to help fund the work I'm doing, just go to this page and use PayPal to send your support. 

Thank you for reading.

Labor Day - Now and In the Past

As I looked at articles I wrote on past Labor Day Holidays, I was trying to decide which I'd repost today. I decided I'd focus on this idea from 2011.


Do you think of Mentoring as a A Jobs Creation Strategy?

What if we could put thousand of unemployed people in long-term jobs while also helping more youth living in high poverty areas prepare for future jobs and careers?

In numerous articles being written on the 2011 Labor Day weekend the unemployment rate was stated as being between 9% and 16% reflecting people out of work, no longer looking, or under employed. In 2024 it is at 4.1% (see chart)

Many talk of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure as a jobs creation strategy for putting people back to work. However, that does not address the large number of people who are in the birth to work pipeline who are not being adequately prepared for 21st century jobs and careers.

What if we had a jobs program that could create jobs for currently unemployed people and do more to help youth from inner city neighborhoods move successfully from high school to college and to jobs?

I’ve been aggregating information about poverty, poorly performing schools, social justice and workforce development for many years. This section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library contains many articles on this topic. (research library).

One article I found in 2011 is titled Overcoming Intergenerational Poverty (pdf). The writer (Donna Beegle, who you can find on LinkedIn) recounts her own struggle to get through college and does research to show the barriers others from areas with high concentrations of poverty face.

In one of the conclusions she says “"Mentoring and Social Capital
A strong link between mentor support and academic success emerged in my study of students from generational poverty. I found that if students had mentors early in life and in college, they were more likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree. Mentors facilitated their understanding of social capital possibilities, expanded their networks of support, and let them know about important resources. In addition, mentors helped generate trust, and once participants felt safe and trusted, they were able to share their poverty related experiences with others. As a result, they received more assistance.

Additionally, through their mentors, respondents learned new communication styles and behaviors that enabled them to communicate more effectively in the college environment. Mentors, and in most cases, the mentors’ connections, were pivotal when linking participants to information and contacts. This facilitated their success in achieving literacy and completing higher education. For example, mentors helped respondents understand the intricacies of filling out financial aid forms and taught them how to improve their study habits. In some cases, these resources reduced the stress of poverty and allowed the respondents to focus on their studies for the first time."”

Others are focusing on mentoring as a form of expanding social capital and my own view of a volunteer based tutor/mentor program shows youth surrounded by volunteers who come from diverse workplace backgrounds.  I've been visualizing this idea using the graphic below since the mid 1990s.

In a small tutor/mentor program with 50-70 pairs of youth and volunteers there could be five to 10 jobs. This infrastructure graphic shows what needs to be in place. 

The talent chart on page 5 of this Tutor/Mentor Institute PDF does the same. Most tutor/mentor programs don’t have this range of talent and they struggle. Our 1994 to 2010 surveys of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago shows many neighborhoods with few or no organized programs.

Since there are over 200,000 youth living in high poverty in the Chicago region, how many tutor/mentor programs might be needed to reach 50% of these? 500 programs with 75 youth each would cover the city and suburbs and still only reach about 38,000 kids.

How many jobs might be created if an effort were made to build a comprehensive network of tutor/mentor programs operating in all poverty areas of the city and suburbs. How many people might this put to work? How many internships might be created for youth in these programs? How might this contribute to the current economy in high poverty neighborhoods while also building the future workforce and lowering the costs of poverty at the same time?

Look at this article from 2022, with maps showing areas of concentrated poverty in the USA. 

Every one of these areas could use the strategy I piloted since 1993 through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and have led through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011. 

Maybe if we looked at this as a jobs and infrastructure program the government or some high profile foundations would take another look at this? What do you think?

I did not create the tutor/mentor programs I led, or the Tutor/Mentor Connection, by myself. I had lots of help from dedicated, talented people.  Since 2011 I've not had as much help, and thus resources that we built in the 2000s are now only available as archives.

For the past 10 years I’ve been trying to build a team of people that will help me think through these topics and will help generate the resources and public will needed to make more and better non-school tutor/mentor programs available.

I recently had a conversation with a supporter who said "I've suggestions for how you could do this better."   I responded, are you willing to do the work to put your suggestions into action?  

That's my invitation.  Create your own blog and/or video library.  Re-write my blogs. Create new versions of my videos.  Rebuild my websites.  Create new versions of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in communities across the country.

Connect them to each other,  using libraries like I've created, so that instead of competing, you're trying to help each other do more and more each year to help the kids in your community.

Connect with me on social media and ask me to ZOOM with you.  Join my forum on NING and ask me to help you.  

And, if you're able, visit this page and make a contribution to help me fund this work for the next few years so I'm here and able to help you and others. 

Thanks for reading.  Enjoy this Labor Day.