I heard President Carter speak in June 2008 when I attended the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service in Atlanta. His purpose, and the purpose of The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation (JRCPF), was (and still is) to encourage the growth of campus-community partnerships and student-led community service learning.
I wrote two blog articles in 2008 in the weeks after hearing Jimmy Carter and I've mixed them together in the message I'm sharing today.
President Carter talked about the gaps between rich and poor, and then demonstrated what he is doing to close this gap by providing awards to three university-community engagement projects.
He said "the greatest challenge we face is the gap between rich and poor." And, "We have the best institutions of higher education in the world, yet many are surrounded by slums."
I created the graphic below as I attended workshops focused on business and university engagement. It includes a map of the Chicago region, showing areas where poverty is concentrated and were youth, families and schools need more help.
In 2008 I'd already spent 14 years trying to reverse the traditional two-way process of how nonprofits obtain resources from people who already have a self interest in wanting these nonprofits to be successful in their missions. We'll never have great social benefit programs in a majority of the places where they are needed based on the current system of competitive allocation.
Yet, if we can engage the talent of volunteers and leaders to serve in intermediary roles, we can do more to connect people who can help with places where help is needed.
I put these and similar charts on the T/MC web site with a goal that they are used by groups of people in universities, churches, businesses, etc. who want to become more strategic, and more engaged, in the ways they use their talent, time and resources to help end poverty in Chicago, and other cities around the world.
In 2008 I'd already spent 14 years trying to reverse the traditional two-way process of how nonprofits obtain resources from people who already have a self interest in wanting these nonprofits to be successful in their missions. We'll never have great social benefit programs in a majority of the places where they are needed based on the current system of competitive allocation.
Yet, if we can engage the talent of volunteers and leaders to serve in intermediary roles, we can do more to connect people who can help with places where help is needed.
I put these and similar charts on the T/MC web site with a goal that they are used by groups of people in universities, churches, businesses, etc. who want to become more strategic, and more engaged, in the ways they use their talent, time and resources to help end poverty in Chicago, and other cities around the world.
I wrote a second article after hearing President Jimmy Carter say "We have some of the best institutions of higher education in the world. Yet many of them are surrounded by slums."I included this map showing locations of colleges and universities in the Chicago region, with overlays showing where poverty was most concentrated and where poorly performing schools (based on 2007 Illinois State Board of Education) were located.
Its aim is to help students, faculty and alumni from each university create tutor/mentor support groups that adopt the mission and strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (led by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011) in their own efforts to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in the areas around the college or university.
As you look at these maps, use the Zip Code Map and Chicago Programs Links, to find contact information for organizations that provide various forms of volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring. You can narrow your search by type of program and age group served by using the Program Locator database (which was built in 2004, but is now only available as an archive).
Thus, if you're at Northwestern, or Loyola, you could have a great impact on the growth of programs in the North part of Chicago and in Evanston. While if you're at the University of Chicago, you could have an impact in helping tutor/mentor programs grow throughout the South Side where our maps show so much poverty and too few tutor/mentor programs.
If you're at Dominican University in Oak Park, you could be supporting programs in Austin and on the West side of Chicago. If you're at the University of Illinois at Chicago, you could also be supporting the entire West side. And, if you're a downtown campus, with students and alumni living in all parts of the region, you could use these maps, to develop engagement strategies throughout the region, using the expressways as routes to connect with programs in different neighborhoods.
You could have a page on your website showing how your students were collecting and sharing information about what tutor/mentor programs in your part of the city were doing, and what universities in other parts of Chicago, and in other cities, were doing to help youth in high poverty areas of their cities. You could even be hosting conferences and online forums to share this information. View this intern blog to see examples of what's possible.
You'll find that some programs are very well organized. Some are small, and may not be so well organized. Some places just offer homework help. Some offer a rich learning environment and connect youth to a wide network of adults and opportunities.
However, the goal is not to pick and choose between different levels of program quality. It's to help develop great volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and extended learning programs in every zip code with high poverty. That may mean helping a small program grow. It also means helping the best programs continue to sustain their work.
It means we need to build a distribution of manpower, talent, operating dollars and technology into every poverty neighborhood, not just a few with high profile leaders.
The Tutor/Mentor Connection was created in 1993 and has been led by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011. It's aim is to share information so that teams in universities begin to develop their own ideal of what mix of services and what type of program structure is best, and that they begin to take on a responsibility for helping such programs grow in the area around the university, with a goal that elementary school kids they work with today can be college freshmen in 6 to 12 years, and college alumni who support the university, and its neighborhood tutor/mentor programs, 15 to 20 years from now.
Read this "Tipping Point" article to see a description of this vision. click here
The result of such leadership can be that instead of wealthy alumni donating $20 million for research at an area university, these same alumni might begin to divide that money into annual grants of $40,000 to $80,000 that would provide operating support to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the area around the university, using the web site of the organization, and the recommendations of the university, to determine which groups to support. It also means that thousands other donors will contribute their own time, talent and dollars to support the on-going efforts of programs in different parts of the city and suburbs.
That was a long term vision when I wrote this in 2008. It's still just a vision.
It requires many leaders in many organizations and communities. This is why I think some of this leadership should be anchored in universities who have long term commitments to their neighborhoods and the city of Chicago. Through these universities we can engage other teams of volunteers, from hospitals, businesses, civic and social organizations. (I'll write about the role of hospitals, faith groups and businesses in a different article.)
It requires many leaders in many organizations and communities. This is why I think some of this leadership should be anchored in universities who have long term commitments to their neighborhoods and the city of Chicago. Through these universities we can engage other teams of volunteers, from hospitals, businesses, civic and social organizations. (I'll write about the role of hospitals, faith groups and businesses in a different article.)
This is not something you can wait for the other college or university to take ownership of. It's a form of leadership and engagement that a student, alumni, professor or administrator can launch from their own blog or web site.
We even created a template of a strategic plan that you might use to start your thinking. We've created a Business School Connection to show how students from the business schools of our major universities could use the skills they are learning to mobilize volunteers and donors for area tutor/mentor programs.
Since 2008 I've created other visual essays to encourage universities to create on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies. See them in these articles.
Since 2008 I've created other visual essays to encourage universities to create on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies. See them in these articles.
As you read the paper this week about another shooting in Chicago, or about some leader promising new hope for America, I hope you'll look in the mirror and say, "Solutions to America's problems start with me." That's what Jimmy Carter did.
Thank you for reading and sharing my blog articles. I hope you'll connect with me on social media (see links here) and help build an on-line community of people who discuss and share these ideas.
And thank you to those who made 2024 contributions to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. If you did not contribute this year, please make a donation in the coming months. Visit this page for details.
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