Connecting People, Ideas and K-12 Youth From High Poverty Areas

I've spent the past 51 years connecting youth from high poverty areas of Chicago with volunteers from many different backgrounds, as part of an on-going effort to expand the networks supporting kids as they grow up and as they begin their adult live/careers.

Initially this was through the tutor/mentor program that I led at the Montgomery Ward Headquarters in Chicago from 1975 to 1992.  Then it continued through the Cabrini Connections program that I formed in late 1992 and led through mid 2011.

When we formed the Cabrini Connections program we recognized that one more small program could be life-changing for the teens and volunteers who were served, but would not have much impact on the more than 200,000 school aged youth living in high poverty areas of Chicago.

So we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and launched it in January 1994. I've led it since then, but through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011.  

The programs I led served youth who lived in the Cabrini-Green area on Chicago's Near North side until the early 2000s when we began to accept kids from other parts of the city.

I've been interested in using maps since the late 1970s when we plotted locations of buildings in the Cabrini-Green area to show where our current students were living. We used this to target recruitment of new students to buildings where current students were living, thinking that this would help convince new students to join.  We did that using sketch paper, since I had not learned about GIS mapping at that time.

I did begin to learn about GIS mapping in late 1992 as we were planning the strategies of the new Tutor/Mentor Connection. And by 1994 we were producing maps on a regular basis, with the help of donated software and computers and volunteer talent.

In 2008 we received a $50,000 gift from an anonymous donor, focused at rebuilding our mapping capacity. Half of that went toward hiring Mike Traken, a GIS specialist, to make our maps.  Above is one that he produced in 2008 showing where our Cabrini Connections students were living.

At the right is one of many maps that Mike created between early 2008 and early 2011.  It shows where volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are most needed, based on indicators like high poverty and poorly performing schools. Then it adds overlays showing locations of tutor/mentor programs in our database, and in this example Citi Bank locations in Chicago.  Browse this set of articles on the MappingForJustice blog to see more business maps created by Mike. 

Our goal was to convince businesses, professional groups, faith groups, health care and higher education leaders to use maps to form strategies that would support tutor/mentor programs that were located near their facilities, or where employees lived, or on the routes they take to and from work each day.  

While I've found many examples of business using maps to plan store locations, or to draw customers to stores, I've not found examples of them using maps to guide philanthropy or employee engagement. If you have examples, please share them. 

During the mid 2000s I learned about another type of mapping that could be used to visualize your network, showing who you were connected to and how strongly you were connected.

In 2010 I was able to obtain donated software from Valdis Krebs of Org.net and to recruit students from three Chicago area colleges.  They met with me on the TutorMentorConnection.ning.com site in a group established to focus on network analysis. 

One outcome of that was a set of articles showing participation in 2009 and 2010 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago from May 1994 to May 2015.

Unfortunately I was not able to keep these interns with me so their work did not continue.

However, my interest in understanding networks did not change.   In Spring 2012 two interns from South Korea, via IIT in Chicago, took a look at participation in the Ning site since it was formed in 2007.

Each student created a presentation using Gephi software.  View this one here.

The second presentation can be seen here

I keep looking for examples of other people using maps like I'm demonstrating. 

However, the really important use of network maps is to help show how organized tutor/mentor programs are expanding networks for the kids and volunteers in their programs.

In 2010 I posted this graphic in the Ning group and wrote, "One of the goals of our Social Network Analysis is to find a way to show how the networks of kids living in highly segregated, high poverty, inner city neighborhoods changes over many years as a result of being part of a tutor/mentor program like Cabrini Connections. In this web site, Bob Pearlman shows that "who you know" is more important than what you know. He points to a Silicon Valley study by AT Kearney, which shows how kids living in poverty don't have people in their lives modeling college and technology careers, thus they are less likely to pursue those careers.

Thus, if we can create a SNA survey that shows how frequently kids are in contact with people who went to college, hold jobs in Science, Math, Technology, Engineering, health care, law, etc., we can ask our teens to take this at the beginning of each year. Comparison maps from year to year, should show an expanding network created as a result of being part of a tutor/mentor program."

I was not able to do this in the Cabrini Connections program since I left in mid 2011. And while I've shared this idea often, I've not found any youth-serving program doing this type of network analysis.

Last fall a team of students in an information visualization MOOC at Indiana  University created a new analysis of the 1994-2015 Tutor/Mentor Conferences.  The image below is an example of the type of information that can be pulled through the map.  This shows the number of conferences that were attended by Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Metro Chicago. 

They also created an open source network mapping tool that anyone can use to create a data collection sheet and upload it into Kumu.io or Gephi.  

You can find links to both of these on this page. 

I no longer lead a tutor/mentor program so I don't have access to students and volunteers to survey them to collect data that could be mapped using this tool.  However, any youth serving program could do this. Perhaps you can even enlist manpower from a local university to do the work for you.  Just point to what past interns have done for me.

The maps showing participation in Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences show that I was connecting to the majority of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and to many in other cities.  My follower lists on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram show that I'm still connected to many of these people and to many others who represent the broad ecosystem of the education/youth development world.

However, that does not mean they are talking to me, or to each other, about the challenges they face and the opportunities they perceive.  It's possible to create a data collection form using the new Network Mapping tool, that people in my network could use to show how they are connecting to me and each other.  The data from that could be converted to spreadsheets and then network analysis maps.  

I wonder how many might respond to an invitation to share that information.

These are things I think about every day.  If the ideas resonate with you, please share them in your own network.  Create your own version of my maps and graphics, focused on your own city/state.  Then share them so I can learn from you as you are learning from me.

You can find links to my social media sites on this page.

And, you can find information about helping me pay the bills on this page.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend.