Celebrate and support mentoring - National Mentoring Month

It's National Mentoring Month, when mentoring in all its different formats is celebrated across the world. I led two different volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago between 1975 and 2011 and that's what motivates me daily to try to raise visibility and draw operating resources to all of the youth serving programs operating in Chicago and other cities.

The graphic below shows a range of young people and volunteers who were involved in these programs. In the lower right corner is a photo of me with Leo Hall, who was in 4th grade when we were first introduced in 1973. We're still connected on Facebook and Instagram. 
 

Every January since the early 2000s I've written an article that highlights National Mentoring Month. I sent my January newsletter out this week and included links to Mentoring Month resources.  You can read the newsletter here.

Last January I wrote this article, showing the Mentoring Stamp released by the US Postal Service in 2001, and introduced at our spring Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. 

It's one of many articles where I use graphics like the one below to focus on the research needed to segment our understanding of all the different groups of people being served by various types of organized and informal mentoring.

During 2024 I shared several articles with maps like the one below that show areas where persistent poverty is concentrated in the USA.  These are places where organized, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are most needed. 

As you celebrate mentoring this month, and hopefully throughout the year, I encourage you to use the graphic shown below as a reminder of your ability to draw people from your network to my library of programs and to the websites of individual Chicago area tutor and/or mentor programs. Use the information to build your understanding of the work being done and of ways you can use your own time, talent and dollars to help.

You can create your own versions of this graphic, showing your city instead of Chicago, and pointing to lists of youth programs in your city, if someone is collecting and sharing that information.  If no one is doing this, share my articles with people at your local college and university, and with wealthy alumni. Encourage them to fund a multi-year Tutor/Mentor Connection type research and action program that involves students, faculty, alumni and the local community.  View these articles to see what's possible.

Thank you for reading.  I hope you'll connect with me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and Mastodon. See links on this page.

I also invite you to make a contribution to help me pay the bills in 2025 and continue sharing this information. Visit this page.