Movement building - who's involved?

As we head into 2026 millions of people will be focusing on the fall elections and efforts to take back control of Congress from the GOP majorities, as part of a much greater effort to remove our current President and give him a new office in a Federal Prison. 

I'll be one of those millions of people. But I'll also spend time every day trying to help well-organized, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs reach k-12 kids living in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other places, understanding that kids in these areas won't get extra support without intentional efforts of individuals and teams working throughout the country.

If you've read many of my past articles you'll see my use of visualizations and concept maps, with a focus on systems thinking and building blueprints that show "who needs to be involved" and "in what role" and "in what place" and "for how long". 

With that introduction please view this short video.

 

How do we get from "here to there?"

If you're an event organizer or youth program leader do you have a visualization showing the range of talent needed for you to succeed? Do you have a visualizations showing what networks need to be connected to you and each other?

Are you familiar with social network analysis? Do you already create visualizations that show who you're connecting with, or who your students are connecting with because of your intentional efforts?  Review articles in this section of the Tutor/Mentor website. 

I've written about this since the mid 2000s when I started this blog.  Look at articles like this, this and this to deepen your understanding of what I'm writing about.

Are you already doing this work?  Do you want to learn more?  Let's connect on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, Twitter and other platforms (see links here). 

Thanks for reading. Subscribe to this blog and follow my newsletter. I'll be writing more articles on this topic and introducing a new open source mapping resource that I hope you'll use in your own efforts.