Tutor Mentor Institute, LLC

Advertising Support for Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

2012-01-27T14:47:00.001-05:00

Below is a list of advertisers who have paid a $25-$50 fee to have their web site listed for six or 12 months. We appreciate this support because it helps us continue to do the work we do. If you'd like to be included email tutormentor2@earthlink.net

Visit this link to learn more about advertising opportunities on this blog and four other blogs and web sites hosted by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

Note: we are testing this concept. Advertisers will be added as they apply.

Mentoring Summit - Reflections; Call to Action

2012-01-26T14:53:00.004-05:00

I was in Washington, DC on Jan 24 and 25 for the 2nd Annual National Mentoring Summit. More than 400 people involved in mentoring programs, networks and support organizations were connected for two days of networking and workshops. Now the real work of putting these ideas into practice takes place.

One of the emotional highlights of the Summit came yesterday during lunch when Beverly Bond, Founder of Black Girls Rock! moderated a panel of students/volunteers who each told of how mentoring made a difference in their own lives.

As I listened to Beverly and this panel it reminded me of the year-end dinner celebration we held each year since 1973 to celebrate the connection of youth and volunteers in the programs I've led in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago. The panel members were different people from different programs, but the messages were the same. As Beverly said, "people in these programs know the many small and big success of tutor/mentor programs." Data and professional evaluation statistics don't paint the real picture. Below is one of many videos created at Cabrini Connections during the past 15 years. You can find more here and here. The video below shows parents speaking at one year-end dinner.

Year-End Dinner 2010: Parent Speakers from Cabrini Connections

These stories are powerful. They need to be told over and over with the same reach and frequency as corporate ads for fast food, banks, and wellness. But we don't have the money. Thus we need volunteers from business, colleges, high schools and faith groups to become our journalists, movie makers and story tellers.

This is another video created by a volunteer and telling our story.

Adopt a program and become their journalist for as long as you can and then recruit someone to take your place. Learn to close your stores with a call to action: "Be a volunteer. Be a donor. Be an intern. Be a business partner."

Then go one step further, point to a directory of tutor/mentor programs for your city, and say "we need great programs in every high poverty neighborhood." Point to videos, web sites, an social media places that expand the range of places and ways volunteers and donors can help tutor/mentor programs grow in an entire community, and in every state in the Union.

This video does that. It was created a couple years ago by one of our interns. The contact information at the end has changed. We're no longer part of Cabrini Connections. However the message and purpose of the video has not changed.

I'm no longer leader of a single tutor/mentor program because I could not find enough dollars to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection operating under the umbrella and funding base of one small program. However, I'm no less committed to helping strategies grow in business, faith groups, philanthropy, media and government sectors that provides "a better operating system" and does more to make constantly improving mentor and/or tutor programs available in more places to help more kids through school and into adult responsibilities.

If you've been touched by these stories or have responded to the President's Corporate Mentoring Challenge, I'd like to become a resource to help you develop strategies that benefit youth, your employees, your company and the community.

Mentoring Summit - Social Capital Connections

2012-01-19T11:15:00.007-05:00

This graphic shows a small part of the network of people who have helped inner city Chicago kids move through school and into jobs and careers through the efforts of programs I've led at Montgomery Ward and Cabrini Connections since 1975. I think more programs who can build and sustain these connections should be available in big city neighborhoods. Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC I've been trying to make that happen.

Next week I'll be in Washington, DC attending the National Mentoring Summit. While I'm there I hope to connect with leaders from different cities and states. I also hope to connect with people who are not able to attend the Summit, but who will connect with me and others via Twitter and Facebook.

Use this link to connect with the Summit on Twitter. Conversations regarding the summit will use the Hashtag #Mentor2012

To connect with MENTOR on Facebook go to http://www.facebook.com/MENTORnational

While my goal is to find partners, benefactors and corporate leaders who will support our efforts in Chicago, I also am hoping to connect with leaders who view mentoring and tutoring as a strategy for expanding the social capital of youth living in highly segregated, poverty neighborhoods of big cities. I've written articles about social capital in the past and point to research that I'm reading that show how the income of your parents and wealth of your community determines your future and impacts your performance in school. If that's true, we should be looking for ways to demonstrate the growth of the network of adults and experiences surrounding youth who participate in these programs as opposed to youth who don't have access to well-organized tutor/mentor programs.

I've been building my network of ideas, friends, peers for over 30 years. What if kids in inner city neighborhoods were able to build their own networks over a period of years and what role might tutor/mentor programs have in accelerating that process. This graphic illustrates the growth of a network over time. This PDF shows this in a much more strategic way.

Thus, my hope is that next week in Washington I'll connect with leaders who also are thinking of volunteer involvement in organized tutor/mentor programs as a strategy for building social capital for a youth, for the volunteer and for the programs that enable these connections to take place.

If you're one of these people and want to connect with me in DC, or via Twitter or Facebook, contact me and let's find time to meet. Find me on Twitter @tutormentorteam and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TutorMentorInstitute

Steps toward collective action

2012-01-18T13:44:00.003-05:00

I'm attending the National Mentor Summit
next week in Washington, DC and on Monday January 30 I'll be co-hosting a panel discussion of Mentoring leaders from 7pm-8:30 at
First Unitarian Church, Hyde Park, IL. You can see the invitation for that event here.

So how do we build on what takes place in these two events so we can influence the growth of mentor-rich programs in thousands of locations around the country and in the Chicago region?

I'm part of a variety of information sharing networks and one of my Facebook connections posted this thoughtful article this week.

I met with a volunteer who I've known for 30 years yesterday and we both agreed that most adults are too busy to read through articles like this, or to read through all of the ideas and strategies I share on the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site.

We have a society that wants quick fixes to complex problems and with people who have too little time, commitment or discipline to spend time learning about problems and solutions on an on-going basis.

So how do we overcome this? Service Learning.

If we engage young people with this information as part of service learning, study programs, college PhD work, they can spend years building their own understanding. They can also learn to communicate what they are learning in blog articles like the one I pointed to, or like those our interns are posting on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

We can build a new generation of leaders who have dug much deeper into social problems and collective solutions, but who come to adult roles with habits of learning from others in a networked-world.

I wrote about the Broad Foundation last summer because they are putting millions of dollars into an effort to train future leaders who will be embedded in the education infrastructure all over the country within 10-15 years...and they will be connected to each other and the ideas the Foundation will continue to share.

All we need is one philanthropist or business to invest in the Tutor/Mentor Institute in the same way, and we can build a network of leaders who share ideas from our library in every city in the world and who work together to attract the operating and innovating resources needed throughout the network to make these ideas a reality in changing future lives for kids living in economically disadvantaged areas.

It starts with finding researchers/writers who will dig deeper into these ideas and work to share them via their own talent and communications skills.

Day of Service. Day of Learning!

2012-01-15T10:34:00.007-05:00

The Dr. M.L.King, Jr. National Holiday is Monday, Jan. 16 and, like previous years, I’ve seen numerous articles encouraging people to go out and “volunteer” with suggestions including “prepare meals for a soup kitchen, visit the elderly and assemble food and toiletry kits for the homeless”. Here’s one story about the Holiday.

Last Thursday I saw an announcement from the Serve Illinois Commission where Comcast is seeking community-based organizations to partner with for a company-wide annual day of service during the April National Volunteer Week.

These service projects are great for team building and for short term, done-in-a-day projects. And they do necessary and helpful work. But do they really make a dent in poverty and complex social problems where more help is needed every day of the year, not just on national holidays?

What if employee volunteers, family and friends were encouraged to do a “day of learning” where they visited web platforms with information related to poverty, education issues, challenges non profits face, etc. and where they begin to look at ways they and people they work with could offer time, talent and dollars throughout the year to support a full range of organizations working in different neighborhoods, but on the same problem?

What might they study? Below is a map I created a couple of years ago to show how groups could learn about the connections between poverty, education and health from a variety of sources. Such learning could lead more people to understand the value of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs and the need for such programs to be located near youth living in high poverty areas.

Thus, while many people could be painting classrooms, working in food pantries, or building housing on Monday, many others could be meeting at churches, business locations, hospitals, homes and in on-line learning communities, where they draw from an on-line library of articles and ideas.

This map is from the GUEST MAP on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. If you visit the map you can click on the icons and see comments and introductions from people who have visited the site in the past. The map illustrates our goal of serving as a "social problem solving platform" that can be used by people from throughout Chicago, and the rest of the world.

The potential for groups to connect in on-line learning groups is growing. I’ve written about organized on-line learning communities in the past. Here’s the link. Here’s a web site hosting on-line learning.

I’ve written hundreds of articles on this blog and I’ve pointed to articles written by people far smarter than I am. I have more than 1900 links in a web library that show where and why volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are needed and why it’s good for business to support volunteer-involvement on a year-round basis

Furthermore, I've created an on-line directory that uses maps to help visitors understand where high poverty neighborhoods are in the Chicago region and where volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs are located, or needed.

The learning that people do tomorrow and throughout the year can help more people understand the lack of mentoring, tutoring, learning, jobs, etc. that contribute to hopelessness and the gang culture that breeds violence and poor education outcomes in many of these neighborhoods. By visiting web sites of dozens of youth programs in Chicago and all over the world, volunteers, donors, business partners and program leaders can share the responsibility of building and sustaining world-class tutor/mentor programs in EVERY poverty area by borrowing from the best ideas from any of these programs and by providing the talent, dollars, technology needed on an on-going basis to implement these ideas.

At the end of a day of reflection individuals and groups can post blogs, update wikis, and share their ideas in forums like http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com or in Facebook. If you've a favorite place for sharing ideas and collaborating with others, please tell us about it.

I'm going to be taking part in a week long learning and networking effort, starting tomorrow. It's called JELLY WEEK. If you click on the JELLY WEEK map you can see that teams from nearly 200 places and more than 30 countries are participating. I'm part of a about a group collecting information about education efforts throughout the world. Members come from South America, Austria, Sweden and many other countries.

If this type of collective learning is happening throughout the year, and during every national holiday, those who do service and those who do learning will be building better understanding of the complex problems we face and a more sophisticated range of solutions.

As a result, more people will become directly involved in places throughout Chicago working to help solve social problems, and will be connected to people and ideas of other people throughout the world who are doing similar work.

To me, the “I Have A Dream” speech means that some day in the future the problems of poverty, social inequality, wealth gaps, hunger, etc. will be less than it is today because of what we learn, and what actions we take based on what we learn.

That won’t happen unless short term service projects are matched by learning, reflection and information sharing.

Community Collaboration Portal - Glasgow

2012-01-12T11:17:00.003-05:00

For more than six years I've pointed to the Boston Innovation Hub as an example of a community portal that has the potential to connect all sectors of the community in problem solving that addresses each slice of the community interest pie. This is one article where I've done that.

I've been connecting with a network of innovators from around the world who are planning an international collaboration for next week. They call this JELLY WEEK. More than 30 countries and 170 teams are now involved.

This idea started in spring 2011 in Germany and has grown over the past six months. I'd love to have people building a Social Network Analysis map that shows this growth. I've set up a group to map the growth of the Tutor/Mentor Connection network which you can see here.

The value of this network is that it constantly adds new information to what we already know. Today the network introduced me to a site that does what the Boston Innovation Hub is doing, but perhaps with even better and more updated technology. Take a look. http://www.understandingglasgow.com/

There are still features that could be added to these hubs that would build a citywide understanding of organizations working to solve specific problems, which is what we do with the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.

If we can build this information into hubs like the "Understanding Glasgow" hub, then the collective efforts of many people in the region could generate greater visibility for the entire sector of organizations working to solve a community-wide problem, and this can lead to more consistent flows of operating resources and talent to each neighborhood where the problem is high, and to the organizations already operating in these neighborhoods.

During the JELLY WEEK I'll be on-line with a group from Sweden and I'm working with another group from South America and Europe. If you'd like to help build our our maps and network analysis tools, join me in the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

Finding Talent to Achieve Mission

2012-01-06T09:59:00.002-05:00

The chart below shows the range of different talents I'm trying to recruit to help achieve the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and Tutor/Mentor Connection. See the actual chart here. I read an article today about Yoxi: a new Media Platform for Social Innovation. The founder, Sharon Chang, was interviewed in this article and when she talked about recruiting talent she said, "the kind of creativity we need to achieve sustainable success comes from stretching the mind to a state of real elasticity. The first step is to believe in making the impossible possible".

There are plenty of people in the world to tell you that what you're doing won't work. However, finding talented people who will try to make the "impossible possible" is what I've been trying to do for many years.

Unmet Social Needs Worsen Health

2012-01-05T15:29:00.004-05:00

This AMA News article titled "Unmet Social Needs Worsen Health" shows that "Although many physicians say their patients have health concerns caused by social issues, only 20% feel able to address them."

Over the past six years I've posted links to other articles showing the relationship between public health, poverty and education. One article titled Re-framing School Dropout as a Public Health Issue includes this quote: "Good education predicts good health, and disparities in health and in educational achievement are closely linked". This is from an article by Nicholas Freudenberg and Jessica Ruglis posted at http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2007/oct/07_0063.htm

What can we do to recruit hospitals, insurance companies and health professionals to be owners and leaders of tutor/mentor strategies in their own communities? Here's an outline of a strategic plan that health leaders might use to develop their own strategy.

Read more related public health articles and follow the links.

Guest Blog Post: Getting the Point Across

2012-01-03T09:49:00.004-05:00

A collective effort requires involvement from many people to communicate ideas and expand the number of people and resources involved in community problem solving. At this Debategraph site you can see how an article I wrote was shared by David Price, co-founder of Debategraph.

Below is a Guest Article introducing the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to potential new friends and supporters, written by Mary Gerace, Mary Gerace Enterprises, Chicago, IL

Communicating complex ideas in a conversational way is an everyday challenge. Visionary ideas are large and abstract, requiring distillation into language that resonates.

Dan Bassill's message is visionary and distinct. While he endorses the traditional funding sources of government and philanthropic grants as necessary for the operation of nonprofit youth mentoring organizations, he insists it’s not nearly adequate. He promotes a more sophisticated paradigm for this work. He encourages comprehensive, long-term corporate sponsorship cooperation, extending well beyond cash contributions, for neighborhood tutor/mentor programs until it becomes a commonplace, everyday business practice -- a customary and expected corporate "give-back" that is very generous in its scope. The redounding benefits are myriad.

Let's set aside one-on-one tutoring in a volunteer role. We’re talking about something much more substantial. Let's say a corporation makes a commitment of $1 million over five years -- not cash, but in-kind, in the form of donated staff time and expertise. That's $200,000 a year of in-kind donations. And it takes this form: The CEO commits a webmaster, a marketing person, a graphic designer, an advertising/publicity person, a social media person, and a tech person who can service the organization's computer equipment. These are all people who already work for his/her company. This collaborative work is possible to conduct largely if not all online. Makes it very easy. And the corporation will do all the printing of miscellaneous collateral materials, and it'll include a postage stipend of some kind. And it'll throw in $75,000 in cash earmarked strictly for a first-rate fund-raiser for each of the five years, with a modest salary increase each year.

Now as a result of this, the tutor/mentor organization, in effect, has just boosted its staff size dramatically, knows it can count on all of this support for the next five years, and it frees up the executive director and the programming staff to do what they know how to do best, namely, help the kids: focus on service delivery, without having the worry about all the stuff the corporate sponsor is going to provide. This remarkably significant support would make it possible for the program to expand and improve in ways that are nearly unimaginable and should prove to be hugely successful. Because for five years, that organization won’t have to scrape by, won’t have the very burdensome distraction of going out day after day, hour after hour, fighting for every possible donated dollar. It frees up the organization's staff to serve the kids; and working with the professional corporate staff assigned to the organization allows the organization's staff to learn so much more about how to do those various tasks much more effectively. Meanwhile, as we all know, since the kids are being successfully mentored, it makes it much more likely they'll stay in school and proceed on to college, and become productive, skilled members of the local workforce.

There is one extremely important point to keep in mind as we encourage CEOs to pursue a major corporate commitment to this (or any) volunteer endeavor. Today's workplace environment is now focused on uber-productivity, which is another way of saying that many employees are being expected to do the work of two or three people, and working very long, arduous hours as a result. When that CEO pitches his/her staff to become volunteers for what is likely to be perceived at first as the CEOs "new pet project," there must be an element of fairness in the equation. That is, the responsibilities the CEO is asking his/her volunteer team to assume should be treated as every bit as important as company business -- not something to be viewed as low-priority; not low-level work relegated to being done at midnight at home because that's the only time the beleaguered employee can carve out. The type of corporate sponsorship discussed herein will fail if executed thoughtlessly.

Avenues exist already that can permit this corporate sponsorship model to multiply exponentially, both domestically and internationally. It deserves much greater attention from elected officials, donors and urban business leaders everywhere.

------------
At the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum blog you can find writing by others who are helping interpret Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC ideas.

This article shows work that other volunteers and interns have done.

If you'd like to help interpret our ideas or invite me to speak at your company, civic group or conference, join the Tutor/Mentor Forum or introduce yourself to me on Twitter or Facebook.

Platform for Collective Actions

2012-01-02T18:53:00.005-05:00

Phil Simon wrote a book titled The Age of the Platform showing how Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have created business models that support the actions of millions of users. A few years ago I read the book titled The Spider and the Starfish, in which the author told how Wikipedia and eBey were platforms supporting millions of owner-users.

This graphic illustrates how the web sites of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC are intended to be a social problem solving platform that can be used by people throughout the world who focus on the challenges poor kids face in moving from birth to jobs and careers over the first 20 to 30 years of their lives.

A social problem solving platform would include:

a) data related to specific issue/problem,
b) ways to draw millions to the platform;
c) ways to engage the people with the data in order to create shared understanding and,
d) ways to point the efforts of the group to places within geographic boundaries where the ideas and action can support constant improvement, or betterment, resolution of the problem.

This map shows the platform I've been trying to build for more than a decade. It shows many areas where others can share ownership and responsibility for building this platform and for encouraging others to use it.

I think it can apply in any city/urban area and thus partners/talent to build it can come from any part of the world.

Now I need to find investors or partners to help build this platform to meet its potential and the do more to connect people who can help and people, youth and programs in places where help is needed.

Know anyone at Google?

Sharing ideas. World-Wide Network-Building.

2011-12-30T13:08:00.011-05:00

This year has been one of disruptive change for me and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. I turned 65 on Dec. 19 and while many of my peers are retiring soon (or already retired) I'm launching a new business to support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas of mega cities like Chicago.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in July after the Board of Cabrini Connections voted to discontinue support of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in April 2011, after 18 years of operating as a local-global non profit. The change left me with a vast network and a library of resources but without an organizational structure or nonprofit status to recruit talent and dollars that had helped me grow the T/MC since 1993.

While my focus has been Chicago, the maps below show that my network and sphere of influence is the world.

This first map shows participants in the Jan 15-21, 2012 JellyWeek co-working event organized by a group from Germany. I've been contributing ideas to this group and on Jan 19 I will be part of this group's event. I've posted my own vision for a Chicago-based Jelly Week team/project here.

I met David Price, Co-founder of Debategraph in September and with his help launched this planning portal. Anyone who is interested or involved in helping kids born in poverty get the support needed to move through school and into jobs ---over a 20-25 year period, can add their ideas to this platform. They can also take these ideas into work spaces such as JellyWeek or the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum on Ning.

I was a speaker at the National Drop Out Prevention Conference in October 2011 and will be attending the National Mentoring Summit in January 2012. I use maps to show how these efforts should be connecting and working collectively to assure that all young people in poverty or distressed economic situations can get the support systems they need to grow up and thrive as adults.

While I've posted my ideas on this blog and in the sections of the Tutor/Mentor Institute site, I keep looking for more ways to share these ideas and find partners, volunteers, sponsors and benefactors to help me do this work. I began posting essays at Scribd.com in October and already have recorded over 2,000 reads. That number can grow to over 10,000 in 2012 alone.

While I build this network of world-wide partners and friends I look forward to continuing to find people who will help grow this network and apply the ideas in Chicago.

I keep looking for new ways to attract sponsors so that I can stay in this game. If you value what I'm doing and want to associate your brand with my efforts, why not become a sponsor?

Every major city in the world has areas of concentrated poverty and needs a new operating system to engage those who don't live in poverty with those who do. Out of this world of need I hope that I can not only offer ideas that others can use but fund people who will help me develop these ideas in 2012 and 2013, and then take responsibility and ownership of them in future years.

Walk alone to create a vision. Work together to achieve it.

2011-12-29T14:06:00.003-05:00

Below is an article I wrote on Dec. 28, 2007. As I look back this week on articles I wrote during New Year's Week in previous years, this one is really relevant to my current situation.

After working within the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection organizational structure from 1993-2011, with more than 160 volunteers and teens participating each year, I'm entering 2012 as the sole leader of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

Yet, I'm still carrying on the vision and network-building strategy that has been growing for the past 35 years. It is a lonely role sometimes. Yet there I'm meeting many people along this journey who can help me, and who I think I'm helping in their own work.

Hopefully in the next few months I can formalize some of this effort into a new team of people working with me.

------------------------------

The image of the lonesome warrior is one that reminds me of the men and women who are fighting overseas to make this a better world. As we count our blessings, let's pray for the young people in our armed forces.

However, this image is also one that I think of when I think of the people leading social benefit organizations around the world, mostly in isolation, mostly with too few resources to do everything they are trying to do.

Those who lead small non profits, or are struggling to get social benefit ideas launched, may related to this One-To-Many graphic. We're constantly reaching out in many different directions, trying to find the help we need. We're like fish in a bowl, competing with thousands of others for a limited amount of dollars and volunteers. Unless you've got a powerful marketing machine, or are well connected in donor circles, you succeed some of the time, but not most of the time, and you spend tremendous amounts of emotional capital and energy all of the time.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, I'm trying to change this. I'm trying to recruit leaders in many places who lead strategic thinking process in their organization that aligns social benefit with corporate and organizational strategy. Such leaders will use their own advertising, visibility and resources to support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs that lead kids to careers, because it's a core business strategy.

I've been saying this for a long time, but last week I found an article on the Harvard Business Review that reinforces this concept. The article is titled Strategy & Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. Written by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer.

Education and workforce development are of strategic importance for most industries. Thus, if leaders of business, health care, law, journalism, sports and entertainment, etc. are strategic, they can use tools like the Program Locator and Chicago Program Links to choose what part of a city they want to support, and what programs they want to help grow from good to great.

This isn't a strategy to support just one tutor/mentor program, or one brand name like the Boys and Girls Clubs, it's a strategy to help every high poverty neighborhood have comprehensive programs that are one end of the pipeline to jobs and careers for businesses that are strategically engaging their corporate resources to help grow their future workforce.

Over the next seven days millions of people will make charitable decisions, either for good will, or for tax deductions. Choose a program like Cabrini Connections, or one of the others listed in the Links Library, and this will show the impact of Many to One.

National Mentoring Month - Who Mentored You?

2011-12-27T15:35:00.005-05:00

On December 26, 2006 I wrote this article. I've updated it as we head into the 2012 National Mentoring Month.

During January the attention of the nation will be focused on mentoring
through the 4th Annual National Mentoring Month campaign. During the month many celebrities will talk of how important a mentor has been in their lives.

A few months ago I heard a former US Attorney for Northern Illinois, Anton Valukas, talk about how his years as a mentor to 3 inner city boys was more important than the years he was the powerful US Attorney.

I've been a leader of a tutor/mentor program for more than 30 years, and I agree with how important mentoring is, to the youth we've connected with adults, and to the youth connected to mentors. I also know, that mentoring alone, is not enough to help kids living in high poverty, inner-city neighborhoods stay in school and move to jobs and careers. That's why I coined a term "Total Quality Mentoring, TQM", which describes the type of mentor-rich program we lead at Cabrini Connections in Chicago.

In a TQM program we surround youth with many adults, not just the primary one-on-one mentor, and we provide a range of learning, enrichment and skill building activities. This is a village of adults, all focused on helping raise the kids to reach jobs and careers by their mid 20s.

2011 note: Recent research based on social capital theory shows the value of expanding the network of adults and learning experiences surrounding inner city youth.

Good mentoring, regardless of the format, depends on an effective system of coaching and support for mentors. In a TQM program, that system of support requires funds to rent space, provide computers, and offer learning activities in addition to mentoring. Every tutor/mentor program in Chicago shares the same common needs. Leadership and innovative marketing strategies need to be developed to motivate donors and volunteers to support all of these programs, not just a few high profile groups.

That's why I hope that during the final days of 2006 (now 2012) you will think of who mentored you and look for ways to make a financial donation to support one or more of the programs included in the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Links list.

That's why I also hope investors, partners and donors will also support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so we can keep Tutor/Mentor Connection available to Chicago and help similar intermediary organizations grow in other cities.

My hope is that some of the lawyers and stock brokers who are making multi-million dollar bonuses this year will think of how a mentor has helped them have their success, and they will make major gifts to tutor/mentor programs, rather than the IRS, as a way of celebrating their success.

With such help some of our teens can be successful business leaders in the future. Can you help make that happen?

Thanks to everyone who has helped us connect inner-city Chicago youth with volunteer tutors and/or mentors during the past year. Your donations will help us do that again in 2012.

Creating a Service and Learning Organization that Mentors Kids to Careers: 2012 Resolution

2011-12-26T11:31:00.004-05:00

If you've read some of the messages I've posted to this Blog you'll see that between 1975 and June 30, 2011 I led a small non profit that seeks to connect workplace volunteers with children and youth living in neighborhoods of highly concentrated poverty.

I've been using this blog to share this message since mid 2005. I used an email and printed newsletter to share this in previous years. Following is an update of a message I First wrote in late December 2005

Our goal is to create an organized framework that encourages volunteers to serve as tutors, mentors, coaches, advocates, friends, leaders in on-going efforts that make a life-changing difference for these kids. By life-changing, I mean that the kids will not be living in poverty when they are adults because they will have the academic, social/emotional and workplace skills needed for 21st century jobs, plus a network of adults who can and will open doors to jobs and mentor them in careers.

I have spent time almost every day for more than 30 years trying to figure out better, more efficient, and lower cost ways to accomplish this goal.

I have learned to mine the knowledge and experiences of others to innovate strategies for tutoring/mentoring, rather than trying to develop my own solutions to problems. Using T/MC web sites, on-line networking and regular face-to-face training and mentoring, I am trying to share what I know, and the process of learning and service that I apply in my own daily routine, so that there are more people in more places accepting this role and responsibility.

So how do we make this vision a reality? We create a "learning organization", which is also the ideal of many of the best businesses in the world. We also create a "service culture" modeled after the work of heroes like Cesar Chavez, whose core values included sacrifice and perseverance, commitment to the most disadvantaged as well as life-long learning and innovation.

In a learning organization, everyone is engaged. In the world of Cesar Chavez, everyone is willing to make huge commitments, and sacrifices of time, talent and treasure to help disadvantaged people move to greater health, and greater hope and opportunity.

Our goal is to find ways to draw a growing number of our stakeholders into this learning process and to build an on-going commitment to service (as opposed to random acts of kindness). This process is intended to include students, volunteers, staff, donors and leaders, and members of the business, education, faith and media in the communities where our kids live.

It also aims to engage leaders and volunteers from other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and in other cities, plus people and organizations in the communities that don't have high poverty, but benefit from a world envisioned by Dr. M. L. King, Jr. as well as a 21st Century America where there are enough skilled workers to meet the future workforce needs of American industry.

The Internet is our meeting place. It's a virtual library of constantly growing knowledge. On Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and Tutor/Mentor Connection web sites we collect and host information that shows why kids in poverty need extra help, where such help is needed, who is providing help, and what volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs can do to connect adults, kids and learning in an on-going, constantly improving process of mentoring kids to careers.

If we can find ways to increase the percent of our kids, our volunteers, and our leaders and donors who are drawing from this information on a weekly basis, and reflecting on this information in small and large groups, the way people in churches reflect on passages from the Bible each week, we can grow the amount of understanding we all have about the challenges we face and the opportunities we have. We can innovate new and better ways to succeed in our efforts.

This process has already started. We need to nurture and grow it in 2012.

Can you help?

Visit the various web sites at the left and start your own learning. I encourage you to read the Power Point Essay titled, Theory of Change which is one of several illustrated essays I've produced to illustrate our goals and the community that we seek to engage.

I'm no longer operating under the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) non profit umbrella, due to strategic changes made in April-June 2011. I've created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in order to continue to support the growth of the T/MC in Chicago and similar organizations in other cities. I encourage you to read about this change and look for ways you might help me in the coming years.

Thank you all for reading my messages. I hope you share them with others. May God Bless you all with peace, good health and happiness in 2006.

Daniel F. Bassill
President
Tutor/Mentor Connection, formed 1993
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, formed 2011
Cabrini Connections
Bookmark and Share

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-26T11:21:00.003-05:00

I hope you all are enjoying this holiday season and that we can find ways to connect our efforts in 2012.

Expanding networks is benefit - social capital theory

2011-12-22T16:24:00.006-05:00

I read a couple of articles today that support the role of information intermediaries like myself, but support my vision of helping mentor-rich tutor/mentor programs reach more youth in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.

A Social Capital Framework for the Study of Institutional Agents & Their Role in the Empowerment of Low-status Students & Youth is a paper written by Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Education, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California.

The article also introduced the concept of ‘empowerment agents,’ who "not only understand the power of institutional support and social capital in the lives of youth and students from historically-oppressed communities; they carry a vision of a more just, humanistic, and democratic society, deeply committed to an enlightened and fair distribution of societal resources, and to dismantling the structures of class, racial, and gender oppression."

Volunteers and staff in mentor-rich programs can take this role if they are trained to do so and if they have the resources to stay in place to support this process for many years.

The marketing and information-sharing needed to make this happen has been the focus of my work for the past 20 years.

That leads me to the next article, which is much shorter than the first. This is a paper titled Strategic Network Formation with Structural Holes. The paper claims that "people who occupy bridging positions between groups in a network are at higher risk of having good ideas".

This is what I do and why I have so many ideas for ways we can make mentor-rich programs more available. However, it's also what could be the goal of "empowerment agents" in hundreds of tutor/mentor programs. If we can teach young people and volunteers to build networks and understand how to use them effectively, they are more valuable in the 21st century marketplace and have more people to help them overcome the barriers of poverty and the challenges of adult lives.

The graphics on this page illustrate the goal of expanding the networks of youth and volunteers who become part of tutor/mentor programs and part of city, state and national networks that connect hundreds of tutor/mentor programs to each other. I've created a workspace where interns, volunteers and others can help me develop network analysis tools that could be used to demonstrate the growth of personal networks within programs, and program networks within cities.

If you know of others who are doing social capital research or who show the mission of their volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs from a social capital perspective, please share the information.

Win the Race for the Future. Sponsor a Driver?

2011-12-16T10:42:00.009-05:00

In August I posted an article offering Naming Rights to anyone who would want to provide three to five years of funding for the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC or a component, such as the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.
Today I want to offer a different suggestion. Think of me as a Race Car Driver.

Look at all the company logos on this racing uniform. Companies aren't doing this for charity are they? They get some visibility for supporting these drivers. Why not think of people like me who share ideas freely with others throughout the world as Race Car Drivers competing in a race to save Democracy through education. Isn't that something that you'd want to associate your brand with? Maybe I can get some clothing company to create a sport coat that I can wear to conferences or speaking engagements, with the company logo right on the front and with other sponsors on the cuffs, sleeves, back, etc. I can wear this anywhere and even put it in my profile picture on Facebook and Linked in.

Maybe one of the major auto companies will donate a car that I can drive to meetings and park in the lots of conferences that I attend, with their logo in big letters along with the logos of other sponsors on the hood, top, back, fender, etc.

Do you think I could find $200,000 to $500,000 worth of sponsors to keep me in this race each year? Maybe a law firm, or dental office, or book company would want their logo on my jacket. Who else?

Can you be the first sponsor, or help me communicate this idea? Maybe others who have ideas to share could get sponsors to support them so they could help all of the people who need their ideas, not just those who can afford to pay.

What do you think? Zoom, Zoom, Zoom!

It's my 35 years of experience and ideas that are valuable. That's what I have to sale. Most of the people starting programs don't have the money to pay enough to keep the Tutor/Mentor Institute growing, or even to keep the web sites updated. If I can fill this sport coat with annual sponsors, I can raise nearly $200,000 and not only continue to share my ideas freely, but do more of the work to build greater understanding of volunteer tutor/mentor programs and how they differ, and to draw volunteers and donors consistently to all of the different programs operating in Chicago and other cities.

Read about ways to contribute. http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/donations

Keeping Track of 300 Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs

2011-12-14T15:06:00.005-05:00

I've been collecting information about Chicago area non-school tutor/mentor programs since 1993 in an effort to make better information available so more people would be doing the marketing and capacity building needed to make constantly improving tutor/mentor programs available in more high poverty neighborhoods.

I use this term "constantly improving" instead of "evidence based" or "high quality" because no program starts as a "great program" and hopefully they are are looking at what other people do well and building their own programs based on what they see. If they have the needed resources each program should constantly learn from their own efforts, what other people do, and what research is telling us and applying what they learn, along with what resources they have, to get better from year to year.

That's what I mean by "constantly improving" and it can't happen without a consistent flow of resources into programs and without the ability to retain talented people for multiple years.

So I've been building this database and trying to keep it updated. I also share the information via a map-based program locator, that also requires constant update.

The problem is, I've never had enough manpower on a consistent basis to do this as well as it needs to be done. There are more than 400 listings in my database who need to be contacted every year just to determine if they still offer any form of volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring. That in itself is a huge challenge. There are many more questions I'd like to be asking, but just maintaining the basis core of information has proven to be an almost impossible task.

Even if I could be collecting this information in all the ways I want, it would do little good unless I had a massive advertising and public education budget that enabled me to be sharing this with all the people who needed to know it. I don't have such a budget and never will.

And furthermore, I don't think any single person or organization should be depended upon to be the master library of tutor/mentor knowledge in a city. I think that information needs to be part of the organizational history of many different groups, not just tutor/mentor programs, but of schools, colleges, churches, mosques, businesses, etc.
Helping kids grow up takes 20 to 25 years in the best of circumstances. If kids live in neighborhoods of high poverty they face many challenges kids in more affluent areas don't face. The adult support system needs to be broader and it needs to last longer.

That means that the knowledge I'm collecting needs to continue to build for decades, not just years. I won't live that long. Small non profits will have trouble lasting that long. Thus, I'm looking for "bricks and mortar" partners who have a long-term investment in a neighborhood. This could be colleges, high schools, faith groups, businesses, etc. It could be a different lead organization in every zip code. Each could have teams of people collecting and updating information about tutor/mentor programs in their area, and sharing this via on-line portals and a master directory like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.

I created this PDF essay to illustrate this problem and the opportunity for students in service learning programs or teams from local business or civic groups to take ownership of this process for a single zip code or community area.

I hope you'll take a look and will contact me to volunteer to take on this information hub role for your own community.

Connecting DropOut Resources

2011-12-12T12:23:00.003-05:00

I created the concept map below in October 2011 after attending the National Drop-Out Summit. I updated it today after attending another Drop-Out prevention event in Chicago last week.

Until the people organizing these events build some sort of internet portal that connects participants with each other so they can find ways to share ideas, strategies and work collectively toward solving this problem, we'll have too little action following powerful data that should motivate more of us to do more to solve this problem.

Fighting Dropout Crisis – Building Public Will

2011-12-11T14:57:00.010-05:00

In the article I wrote Friday, title We All Pay a Price for the Dropout Crisis, I provided quotes from some of the leaders who spoke at events held in Chicago this week. The basic message was “High School Drop Outs Cost All of Us, not just the young people who face a “miserable life”.

I’ve attended dozens of events focused on poverty, public education and the dropout crisis. I’ve read all sorts of research on how to make youth programs and schools more effective.

They all have a point where they say “if we had the money” and if we had the “public will” to create policies and funding strategies to support better schools and better workforce-development activities.

But then they don’t go further to say “how do we achieve this?”

That’s what I focus on. I’d like to suggest two strategies in this article, which I’ve written about often in the past.

1)Using maps for accountability, resource distribution and to obtain the 51% of votes needed to enact new legislation. I suggest that leaders and voters could use maps to build understanding where this problem is most severe, build public support, and to hold elected leaders accountable for what they do. The map above shows locations of high drop-out schools in Illinois. They are mostly concentrated in urban areas but they are scattered throughout the state. The map below shows state legislative districts. The third map is from the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and shows legislative districts in the Chicago area, with overlays showing poorly performing schools, poverty, and locations of existing non-school tutor/mentor programs.

Using maps like this, leaders could determine what districts have high drop out schools. These are districts where elected leaders (and businesses) should be held accountable for what they do to bring resources to the district to combat this problem. The Tutor/Mentor Program Locator map does not show all schools, or have a layer of data showing dropout schools. We could build this if we had the resources. However, such a map may be already available from another sources. If it is, let me know and we can point you to it.

If such a map does not yet exist, then it could be created through a service learning or graduate school project at a local high school or university. I outlined this map-building process in this PDF essay.

Once the map is available on the Internet we can determine how many votes are available from representatives with drop out schools in their districts. If it’s not 51% or more of needed votes, then the next step would be to look at surrounding districts where people and businesses are paying part of the costs of youth not finishing school. We could also look at districts with schools where a large number of youth are not finishing school, but which are not as bad as those in the “high” drop out category.

The goal is to identify enough representatives in the house and senate to get 51 to 60% of the votes needed to pass new legislation.

2) Expand the number of people who “care” enough to vote, volunteer and donate. This is equally important. At Wednesday’s dropout event, Andrea Zopp, President of the Chicago Urban League said “We’re tired. We don’t vote”. We need to get more people into the voting booth.

However, just getting more people in districts with high dropout schools to vote won’t assure 51% of the votes needed to change legislation, unless there are that many legislators representing districts with high drop out schools.

We need to find a way to build empathy and support in more affluent areas where they don’t have a lot of poorly performing schools. We can do that through an effort to increase the number of volunteers who connect with inner city youth in volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.

We can do that if we focus on transforming the volunteer, not just the youth. In October 2009 I wrote an article titled Transforming Adults Involved In Volunteer-Based Tutor/Mentor Programs

This article was converted into this animation by an intern from the University of Michigan working with one of our one-year fellows from Northwestern University. Then it was converted into a video with the help of a volunteer from the United Kingdom.

The point of this article is that volunteers from many parts of the city and suburbs are connecting with inner city youth in non-school and school based tutor/mentor programs. If those volunteers are well supported and stay involved for multiple years some will build a personal bond with the kids, and an empathy for the problem, and will be willing to do more to help the kids move through school and into careers….if they are well-supported in their programs and encouraged in an on-going public education effort.

If we were to have 100 mentor-rich programs in the Chicago region with 50-100 volunteers each, that could be 5000 to 10,000 volunteers who actively advocate for public and private sector policies that help them in their own efforts to help kids to careers, and help schools and others do more of the work that needs to be done.

If in the other big cities throughout the state there were another 100 programs with 25-100 volunteers involved, that could double the number of potential advocates working to change the number of votes available to support new policies that reduce the dropout rate and help more kids through school and into careers out of poverty and contributing to the tax base and the democracy we cherish.

If we keep volunteers connected to kids and programs in years after they do direct service, the total number of potential voters would be even larger after 10 or 20 years. If we also are showing young people what it takes to help them move from poverty to jobs and careers, young people who graduate from these programs can also become voters and advocates.

This represents an army of not-yet-organized potential!

Take time to review these ideas. Share them with people in your own network. Support the infrastructure that leads to a growing number of volunteers connecting with kids in neighborhoods with high-dropout schools. Build map-based accountability and resource distribution strategies that assure that a full range of birth-to-work programs reach kids in neighborhoods with the highest dropout schools.

Instead of paying $200,000 a year to keep a youth in juvenile detention or paying $50,000 to keep an adult in jail, redirect this money to an education and enrichment system that moves more of these young people to jobs and careers.

It can be done.

We all pay price for high school dropouts

2011-12-09T12:50:00.003-05:00

In this article I’m providing quotes from some of the speakers at two events I attended this week in Chicago. On Wednesday the event was “Re-Enrolling Out of School youth: A state, County and City Action Blueprint". On Tuesday the event was “Connecting Communities for the Common Good” and was advertised as “Conversations and Partnership Opportunities with the Obama Administration’s Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Office.”

I ran into some of the same people at both events. Many I've known for more than a decade.

This weekend I’ll post an article showing how maps can be used to build partnership and accountability and possibly to get the 51% of votes needed to affect legislation in the Illinois House and Senate. I’ll also show how volunteer-involvement in tutor/mentor programs can provide the extra adult support youth are calling for and can also build the extra political advocacy needed to gain needed legislative support.

But in this article I want to share some quotes and hopefully get more people thinking about this pipeline to jobs and careers. It's clogged.

Wednesday’s event drew much more media attention than Tuesday’s White House Partnership event, even though the Mayor was a speaker.

The editorial pages of the Chicago SunTimes and Chicago Tribune both had articles showing the high costs to society of young people dropping out of high school.

In the December 8 Chicago SunTimes, Alejandro Escalona wrote “I’ve covered Chicago as a reporter for almost 20 years and every now and then, a new study6 comes along that presents the dropout rate among minority students as an emergency situation with catastrophic consequences for minority communities.” Then he writes “So I find it refreshing that the latest report looks at the drain on city and state resources. Reducing the dropout rate would lower the costs of some enormously expensive social problems and, quite simply, be good for city and state finances.”

A star-studded cast of education and political leaders addressed the crowd on Wednesday at the Union League Club in Chicago. Here are some quotes:

Jesse Ruiz, Chair, Ill. State Council on Re-Enrolling Students Who Have Dropped Out.
“We know what we need to do. We just need a collective effort to do it.”

Andrea Zopp, President & CEO Chicago Urban League
“It’s not just the right thing to do. There is 20% difference in people going to jail between high school grads and youth who dropout. The cost per year to keep someone in prison is nearly $50,000 per person.”

Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Board President
“The failure of our public school system feeds our prisons.” “The US has 5% of the world’s people and 25% of the world’s prison population. We’re doing something terribly wrong.”

Andrew Sum, Professor of Economics, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern Illinois University …author of the research discussed on Tuesday and in media editorials.
“Everything has gotten worse over past 25 years.” “You can no longer make it in Illinois without a high school diploma.” “We can’t have a strong democracy if we tolerate this problem”.

Gery Chico, Chair, Illinois State Board of Education
“Kids tell us what the problem is. First is ‘No adults in my life to motivate me.’ “

Jean-Claude Brizard, Chicago Public Schools CEO, and a Panel of political leaders also spoke but I did not get quotes from them.

While the "Re-Enrolling Dropouts" event was Wednesday, on Tuesday an event at the UIC Forum attracted nearly 1000 guests, with Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel kicking off the event. It's goal was to show faith based and community organizations ways they can build partnership with the Federal Government.

Some quotes from Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel
“Too many families are falling through the cracks….. Government cannot do it alone."

Marie Johns, Deputy Administrator, Small Business Administration was the noon keynote speaker. She said “We’re all given gifts and are responsible to use those gifts to build a better community.”

As Alejandro Escalona wrote in the SunTimes, this is not new news. Even talking about the costs to society is not new news. Unless we find a way to build public willpower to build and sustain comprehensive, mentor-rich school-to-work programs in all neighborhoods with high drop out rates this story will repeat over and over in the coming years.

View the tags at the left to see the hundreds of articles I’ve written about these problems since 2005. Here are a couple:

On October 23, 2007 I wrote a summary of a Chicago Public Schools meeting led by Arne Duncan back in 2006 where he called for High Schools of Excellence…Consequences of Dropping Out of School in Illinois

In September 2005 I wrote a summary of an Illinois High School Summit hosted by the Illinois College Access Network and Chicago Public Schools. The discussion at the Summit was framed by the question, “What is the future vision and what must be achieved systematically for high schools to be successful in the 21st century?” During this Summit one man brought up issue of political will.

He said “Are the right people involved to make significant change? Are the people driving the process the ones in charge of crafting the solutions?

This question was not answered in 2005 and it's not yet been answered in 2011. I've been focusing on this problem for 20 years and I've shared my ideas with Gery Chico, Jesse Ruiz, the Alternative Schools Network, and the past CEOs of Chicago Public Schools and the Mayors of Chicago. They've been available on the internet since 1998.

Yet, I'm still just a whisper in the wilderness. Too few are taking the time to understand how maps and mentoring can be used to expand support for inner city youth and kids attending high school dropout factories.

Visit this blog over the coming weekend and see what I suggest is a strategy for building the public and political will needed to bring more resources into areas with high dropout schools so we can get the pipeline working for more kids.

Faith Leader Seeks Support in Area Teen Killed

2011-12-05T12:39:00.006-05:00

Rev. Corey Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings Church in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago has been camped out on top of a vacant hotel to draw attention to the violence in the Woodlawn neighborhood and raise money to build a new youth center. The map above shows where the church is located and also shows where a 16-year old teen was shot and killed last Saturday.

I've written about Woodlawn in the past and have offered the ideas of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to help build a year-round strategy that draws attention, volunteers and dollars to youth programs throughout the Woodlawn neighborhood.

I offer that service again today. I encourage you to read some of the essays I've posted on Scribd.com and use these in discussion groups this week at churches, congregations and mosques throughout the Chicago region. There is no more unifying activity than people from different faiths working together to help young people have the support system they need to grow up safely.

Visit the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and learn to create your own maps.

Share your Talent!

2011-12-05T11:10:00.002-05:00

This video was created in June 2011 by an intern from Illinois Institute of Technology. It shows what can be done to help non profits by students using their talent and technology skills.

Since June the Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection have split into two organizations. Cabrini Connections continues to operate under a non-profit tax status while the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC was created to support the continued operation of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

The strategy I've been developing for 18 years is based on retail advertising principles learned while working with the Montgomery Ward corporation.

a) we have created a map/ directory showing more than 150 tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, with links to their web sites.

b) if we can create more videos like this, and news stories like these, we can attract volunteers and donors to the programs in the directory the same way retail stores attract shoppers each week.

To do this we need thousands of students working in groups like our Ning forum so that every day a video, animation, blog article or some similar form of communication is reaching out to evangelize the tutor/mentor message and draw volunteers, donors and youth to web directories where they shop for where and how to get involved.

As we build traffic through these efforts we hope to also attract sponsors who will help pay for this work and provide prizes and awards to encourage even greater participation of the talent needed to communicate these ideas.

Can you become one of the early-stage sponsors and investors in this idea?

What Would Drucker say about "Evidence Based"?

2011-12-02T10:59:00.004-05:00

Over the past 15 years there has been a growing movement in philanthropy to document outcomes and to support grant requests and program development with "evidence".

I found this article on the Stanford Social Innovation Review today titled "Why Peter Drucker Distrusted Facts"

At the same time I've been following a few blogs on Innovation around the topic "Innovation is Messy". Here are a few that you can find on a Google Search

Innovation is Messy - "Innovation isn’t a race. First isn’t always best. Use the thools that are available right now and build on the work of others as necessary to improve incrementally."

Innovation Will Always Have Messy Parts: Wisdom from IDEO's David Kelley and 3M's Bill Coyne - "... one element of the process is tougher for many people to accept than the rest -- that it is a messy and uncertain process and efforts to make the early messy stages more rational, safer, and generally neat and clean comforting get in the way of the process."

Spaghetti & Social Innovation: What should stick?"the emerging field of social innovation is like being in a kitchen where the recipe for social innovation is still uncertain and perhaps always will be. While there is definitely a case for articulating core ingredients (e.g., novel solutions that tackle social problems in ways that significantly shift the way the social problems are understood and managed), a wonderful part of social innovation is the openness to variety in how that might be approached and organized."

These are just a few of the articles that I've looked at on this topic. I'm interested in this because my vision of volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring requires the involvement of volunteers from beyond poverty along with youth and families living in poverty who are constantly looking for better ways to build youth career aspirations and learning habits along with a network of adults who can help youth in high poverty neighborhoods move through school and into careers where they fulfill those aspirations.

I don't think anyone has a magic solution yet, or a pill you can give any kid and turn them into a motivated, disciplined learner. Kids in poverty have a lot more external distractions and a lot fewer family and community role models to show them jobs and careers they might aspire to and get them there.

Thus, we're in a process of innovation and we need a lot more people involved. I created this "Operating Principles" pdf many years ago to show how we want to engage everyone in a tutor/mentor program in this learning process.

In a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program the volunteer is in direct contact with the youth so the volunteer must be involved in this innovation. However, volunteers don't come to this work with 35 years of experience that I now have. So that means the staff who coach this process need to be passionate about learning and innovation and need to lead and coach youth and volunteers to grow into this role.

But I don't know of a university teaching this skill and I've never had staff people come to me already "hard wired" with these innovation habits. And due to funding and the work/stress of being employed in a poorly funded non profit, we can't keep young people involved for 10-15 years so they become experienced, visionary older people!

How do we innovate solutions to this problem so such leaders are in thousands of locations? That's the innovation and process the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is focusing on.

'Good To Great' Philosophy

2011-12-01T10:35:00.003-05:00

"Good to Great" & the development of Great Volunteer-Based Tutor/Mentor Programs

How many of you have read the Jim Collins book titled "Good to Great and the Social Sectors"? If not, you get a copy from your local library or Amazon.com and read it.

Here are some links to blog articles where the writers summarize this book

"Good-to-great-and-social-sector"

"Good-Great: Social Sector"

Read this Tactical Philanthropy series of articles and reflect on the resources needed to grow from good to great, and to stay great for many years.

I’ve applied Good to Great concepts in the leadership of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection (and before that in my leadership of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program) since 1977 when I learned about Total Quality Management (TQM) while working as an Advertising Manager at Wards.

I was lucky to have many mentors during the early years and one said “If you don’t write you plan on paper, you don’t have a plan.” Thus, every year since then I’ve written the plan, and made an effort to share it with others in the organization who needed to be the people who embraced the plan and made it a reality.

I now share that plan via our web sites and this wiki with people from around the world.

Since Good to Great is a new way to understand process improvement, I am embracing it, and think this can really help us focus the board and all of our other volunteers on the mission of any single tutor/mentor program and the Tutor/Mentor Connection type citywide strategy rather than just the fund raising.

Below I’ve listed what I feel our our Hedgehog values. Do you agree with these? Are there others that you might add to the list, or that you feel are more important than these?http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Do these ignite your passions and make you want to sacrifice as much as our soldiers in Iraq to end poverty through mentoring kids to careers? Maybe that’s an extreme example of commitment, but what would it take you to make a sacrifice that is even 10 or 20% of what’s represented by the “ultimate sacrifice”?

Hedgehog Roles

a) Getting a youth and volunteers is only the start of the tutor/mentor process. A program needs to keep youth involved and connected from when they first connect at least through 12th grade. We've tried to do this since 1993 for youth living in the Cabrini Green area of Chicago, giving more than 580 youth the opportunity to participate in a comprehensive, long-term tutor/mentor program (Cabrini Connections), which connects them with a diverse base of adult mentors and learning experiences. From 1975 to 1992 we applied the same concepts in a program serving younger 2nd to 8th grade youth.

If we were not providing this, no one else would be.

Just keeping a non-profit organization like Cabrini Connections funded and operating from year to year, is a tremendous accomplishment

b)We maintain a database of Chicago area non-school tutor/mentor programs and an understanding of where they are located, vs where they are most needed in the Chicago region.

No one else in the Chicago region is providing this type of information, at this level of detail

No one else (in Chicago or in any other big city) is using maps or internet-based databases the way we are to draw resources directly to existing tutor/mentor programs

If we were not providing this, no one else would be.

c) We use the database to invite program leaders and stakeholders to gather on a regular basis for networking/learning and capacity-building activities that benefit ALL programs, not just a few highly visible programs.

If we were not providing this service, no one else would be. (No one else can without building and maintaining the type of database we own). What we are doing is providing a form of community information, which is described in this white paper by Peter Levine of Tufts University.

d) We focus on building strategic involvement and long-term commitment from the business community, which uses company resources (people, dollars, jobs, etc.) to build great programs that PULL kids to careers.

Most others focus on what government, teachers, parents need to do. We focus on what business and private sector needs to do because we recognize that there is not enough government money to fuel the operations of programs like Cabrini Connections in all the places they need to be, and for all of the years they need to grow to be good, then to be great.

e) We use Internet to connect people and ideas from around the world, and to stimulate the flow of resources directly to t/m programs throughout Chicago.

In the volunteer section of the Cabrini Connections web site we hosted a "resources to help you" sub-section. This includes links to the volunteer handbook, homework help, and other materials that we hoped all volunteers will read and use as a constant resource. Another sub section focuses on additional web resources to learn from and incorporate in your tutoring, mentoring and advocacy for Cabrini Connections.

This information is what unites us as a community of purpose. As more of our members understand this information we create many owners and many leaders. We can withstand any changes in leadership. We can constantly get better at what we do.

One of the articles I point to is a pdf from the UCLA Center on Mental Health in Schools. The title is School Engagement, Disengagement, Learning Supports, & School Climate. This focuses on motivation, which is the fuel that drives student learning and aspirations. I encourage volunteers to read this, think about this, discuss it with others, and try to find ways to help tutor/mentor programs motivate students, volunteers and leaders to do more each year to help us achieve our mission of helping kids to high school graduation, college, then careers.

f) We are a learning organization. The information we share on these wikis and our web sites is available to any member or supporter. We need to find time to read, reflect and use this information on an on-going basis. This is a lesson I have tried to teach staff, volunteers and partners of Cabrini Connections since we formed in 1993. It's also the core idea we share through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC see web site which was formed in July 2011 after the Board at Cabrini Connections decided to downsize and no-longer support the T/MC strategy.

Leaders, volunteers, students, donors and supporters of programs like Cabrini Connections need to become active network weavers, people who use search engines like Google to find places where other people are offering tutoring/mentoring, or discussing issues related to effective tutoring/mentoring. In these groups members need to participate, sharing information from what they do at their own programs, and providing invitations for people in these groups to use our web sites, or join in the activities that we do.

I do this every day, and if you search Google for 'Bassill', or ‘tutor mentor’ you will find numerous places where I am actively networking. Each person in a tutor/mentor program and a tutor/mentor community should set a personal goal to be active in 5-10 places each month, over the course of a year. If 50 people are doing what Dan does, we can dramatically increase the influence of the ideas we all share, and the number of people who are helping us achieve our mission.

If we were not doing this, no one else would be (and no one else can unless they maintain a database, and lead a resource building effort)

g) I have more than 35 years of knowledge about how to involve volunteers in a non-school tutor/mentor program, along with the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of other people and organizations, and we use this to

1. help parents, teachers, social workers, volunteers, donors, etc. find existing tutor/mentor programs near where they live/work

2. help individual programs grow from Good to Great, while helping new programs fill voids

3. help networks like T/MC grow in other cities and in other social service sectors (which network with the Chicago T/MC in a shared effort of helping programs grow from good to great)

h) We have innovated a knowledge-based innovation and networking process that can be applied by people in other cities, or in any other social benefit sector.

i) We have piloted innovative network-building tools using maps, graphics, video, animation and interactive on-line databases. These can be applied in other cities for the same purpose as we use them in Chicago, or in other social benefit sectors.

Few other organizations in the country can claim this many years of continuous learning and application of knowledge to build and sustain a volunteer based tutor/mentor program.

However, we have not communicated these ideas effectively to enough people and have not built the leadership team and organizational strength to be able to expand our influence and fully develop and share these ideas. That will be the goal of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC over the next five to ten years.

Newsletter sent today - pass it on

2011-11-29T13:12:00.005-05:00

For nearly 35 years I've been collecting information about volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, why and where they are needed, and how they can be supported consistently by business, faith, professional and philanthropic groups.

I share this via the Tutor/Mentor Institute and Tutor/Mentor Connection web libraries and the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator maps.

While more than 800,000 visits and six million page views have been recorded since 1998 by people from all over the world, I also share information from this library in monthly email newsletters and via the May and November Tutor/Mentor Conferences held in Chicago.

The November 2011 eNews was sent this morning to about 3,000 people and can be viewed at this link.

If you want to help kids in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers or increase volunteer and philanthropic involvement from your company, faith group or family, the articles I point to can be used as group reading and reflection. This graphic illustrates that the information we collect and share on our web sites can be used by numerous groups of people in Chicago and in every other part of the world.

Take a look at blogs written by interns and volunteers and how they share what they are learning from this information. You don't need to be in Chicago to do this type of learning and communications. Just join the Ning group and offer your talent.

If you want to subscribe yourself or others to the newsletter, click here.

If you can become a sponsor, investor, partner, intern or volunteer to support this strategy read more at this link.

Growth of the middle-man in non profit sector

2011-11-23T11:47:00.003-05:00

I've used this graphic for many years to illustrate the role of the Tutor/Mentor Connection as an intermediary connecting those who need help (non school tutor/mentor programs and the young people they serve) and those who can help (business, volunteer, donor, etc).

From 1993-2011 I did this role as a non-profit and did not charge a fee to either side to support my services. Furthermore, I built an extensive map-based information system and a year-round schedule of activities intending to draw volunteers and donors DIRECTLY to individual tutor/mentor programs the same way advertising draws customers to retail stores. Let the zip code and the web site of the program provide information the volunteer, donor, parent use to decide about getting involved.

In recent years I've seen the growth of consulting firms who "tell you how to do it" but leave you without the manpower, talent and resources to apply their ideas. I have seen very few consultants acting like the T/MC, using their articles and blogs to draw volunteers and donors directly to the organizations they are trying to help.

A few days ago I saw an article on Facebook titled "The Philanthropic-Consultant Industrial Complex . . . editor notes issue #74". I was not able to comment at that time. Then today as I read Charles Cameron's introduction to a Social Edge forum discussion titled Philanthropic Advisers: Experts in Successful Generosity, I saw a link to a blog by philanthropic consultant, Lucy Bernholz, titled The Business of the Business of Good which pointed me back to the original article that I'd seen on Facebook!

I think the intermediaries like philanthropic advisers can be a good thing. I was given $50k in late 2007 to rebuild my mapping capacity because an advisory was doing research on funding tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and he came to me for information. As I showed him how to use the Program Locator to find programs in the West part of the city I said "If your donor really wants to make a difference, give me some money to rebuild this capacity." He did.

I never would have connected to this donor otherwise.

However, the opposite side of this conversation is that I don't think the consultants and experts, including researchers, are doing enough to drive needed operating resources and talent directly to all of the small and mid-size places who need flexible, on-going resources to build talent, knowledge, experience and human capital within their organizations. Without this there are too few programs reaching too few kids.

Due to my inability to connect consistently with enough philanthropic investors over the past 18 years I've not been able to maximize the potential impact of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. In the end the strategy was dropped in April 2011 by the Board of Directors at Cabrini Connections. I had to create Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in July 2011 in order to keep the T/MC going.

I've always been a consultant, but I gave all my ideas away for free. Now I'm trying to find ways to get paid for sharing some of these ideas.

Part of my strategy is to earn consulting fees from cities, businesses and others who want to duplicate the T/MC concept in their own cities, without the costs of starting from scratch.

I'm committed to finding the dollars and talent to do this, but will never change from the philosophy of using my own time and talent to draw needed resources to the programs on the front lines of the war on poverty who must have these to win.

I encourage you to follow these discussions over the coming weeks and think of ways you can be an intermediary who connects "those who can help" with "those who need help".

Shining Spotlight on Tutor/Mentor Programs in Chicago

2011-11-22T21:30:00.007-05:00

From July 2007 through April 2011 the Tutor/Mentor Connection was fortunate to have four graduates from Northwestern University serve one-year fellowships supporting the two-part strategy of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Each of these students were asked to build an understanding of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and share that in blog articles they wrote while also writing stories to support the youth and volunteers of Cabrini Connections. This concept map was created by Chris Warren at the close of his 2008-09 year of service. He diagramed the stories he wrote and divides them into "local" Cabrini Connections and "global" Tutor/Mentor Connection. Click this link and go to the live map and read stories Chris wrote.

The four part strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection was 1) to collect information about tutor/mentor programs and why they are needed; and 2) increase the number of media stories and public attention focusing on these programs.

We've organized conferences, volunteer-recruitment events and a number of other activities to do this. This Chicago Tribune article from 1994 illustrates this goal.

One way we've generated media attention is by organizing an annual volunteer recruitment campaign each August since 1995. At its peak 150 organizations were participating in volunteer fairs all over the city. Mrs. George Ryan was the honorary chair for the campaign in 2000 and 2001 and Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallis was a speaker at the press conference kicking off the campaign.

Another way we've tried to draw attention to programs is by doing site visits and then writing articles about the programs on blogs. This list has links to stories about many different programs.

If you forward this list of stories to friends, family and co-workers some may choose to send holiday donations to one or more of these programs. That's our purpose in doing this.

However as you look at this we also want you to look at the Talent Needs of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. We have not had the money to keep our NU fellowship in place or to keep a full-time staff person supporting research needed to maintain a directory of Chicago programs and to do site visits and write stories. Hopefully some of our readers will become investors and help us rebuild this capacity.

However, this role could be shared by journalism students from different high schools and colleges and by volunteers from PR and advertising firms. Using the Program Locator maps groups could divide up the city and spend time getting to know each program in their area and writing regular stories that would help educate the broader public so more people provide the dollars and talent each program requires.

It takes a Village to Raise a Child. It also takes a Village to make sure high quality mentor-rich programs are available to K-12 youth in every poverty neighborhood.

Raising Funds for Tutor/Mentor Programs

2011-11-19T10:42:00.013-05:00

This photo was taken almost 12 years ago during a November 1997 event hosted by the Chicago Bar Foundation and the Lawyers Lend A Hand Program. It's purpose was to raise visibility within the legal community that would help raise money directly for individual tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and for the Lend-A-Hand Program's pool of funds which it drew from each spring to award small grants to 15-20 tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.

At the right is an article from the Daily Law Bulletin of the Chicago Bar Association, telling about a collaborative effort of the Chicago Bar Foundation and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, intending to raise visibility for tutor/mentor programs in November that would lead to more contributions in the December holiday period.

This was all part of a strategy developed in 1994 where the Tutor/Mentor Connection would host a conference in November, the CBF would host a fund raising event, and we would create a "Tutor/Mentor Week" to generate greater visibility for all tutor/mentor programs in Chicago that would help recruit volunteers and donors at that time of the school year.

We're approaching the Holiday Season again and volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs still need operating dollars to do their work. From 1994 to 2001 the Tutor/Mentor Connection published a printed directory that people could use to search for different tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.
We never had much money so we were only able to send 300 to 400 copies of this to foundations, media, libraries and the programs listed in the Directory. Thus, it was a big deal when we found a way to put this directory on line in a searchable program locator back in 2004. Then in 2009 we launched a new interactive map version where you could look at a map of Chicago and see where tutor/mentor programs were most needed, based on poverty or poorly performing schools, and you could see icons on the map representing existing tutor/mentor programs in our directory. In both of these versions you could sort by age group and type of program and zip code to narrow your search to find contact information on specific types of programs.

This service consistently has recorded 500-600 visitors a month for over eight years. The chart below shows funding available to the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the past decade to do everything it does, including creating and hosting this map based program locator. You can see that we've had less than $150,000 a year which is less than what it would cost to purchase one full page ad in the Chicago Tribune on a single day!

The T/MC operated as part of a combined Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection non profit since formed in 1993. We split money each year between the site based tutor/mentor program and the T/MC, yet the time spent on the T/MC always was secondary to the time needed to support the 70-80 pairs of students and volunteers in the Cabrini Connections program. Due to the financial challenges of the past decade the Board of Directors finally decided that they could no longer support this dual strategy from a single small program, thus voted to discontinue the T/MC in April 2011.

I "retired" from my role of President, CEO in July and created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in an effort to find new ways to generate revenue and partnership to continue to offer the T/MC to Chicago and to help programs like Cabrini Connections get the volunteers, donors and ideas each program needs to thrive. I did this without any financial commitment other than my own meager savings account.

The Lend A Hand Program received a $2 million award in 2006 and has made grants totaling nearly $240,000 per year since 2007. If we can encourage other businesses and professions to launch similar programs it can generate money and volunteer talent from every industry to support tutor/mentor programs in different parts of Chicago. It's a strategy that can duplicate in other cities if an intermediary group like the Tutor/Mentor Connection is available.

I want to help make that happen but I need your help to do this. I've never been successful obtaining sponsorships for the conferences from a charitable standpoint and I have no experience approaching venture capital people for the type of investment we need to build out the features and services of the T/MC or to fund an aggressive advertising campaign to raise money for tutor/mentor programs in the Directory. Thus, my first request is for volunteers to step forward and fill the different roles visualized on this talent chart. You can see this live at this link.

At the same time I need to raise money for monthly expenses such as hosting the web sites, organizing the next conference, etc. I'm not asking for a charitable donation and I don't have a 501-c-3 structure to offer you a tax deduction for a gift. Instead I'm asking your to help me offer hope and opportunity to inner city youth, and an opportunity for volunteers and donors to be enriched by being part of the lives of these kids.

When Jonathan Kozal talked about his book "Amazing Grace" he said the "Amazing Grace is not what we do for them, but what they do for us."

You can help me by contributing dollars to help me continue to build the Tutor/Mentor Connection and by helping me find sponsors and investors who might want to put the "name" on the Program Locator or on the Conferences or on our Links Library, just like US Cellular puts their name on a baseball field or rich alumni put their name on college buildings, hospitals and sports stadiums.

Associate your name with a vision of helping more kids from poverty move through school and into jobs and careers and you'll have a legacy that can last many years into the future.

Email me at tutormentor 2 at earthlink dot net or send your contribution to:

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC
Tutor/Mentor Connection
Merchandise Mart PO Box 3303
Chicago, Il. 60654

Achievement gap: Black Students Still Behind

2011-11-14T15:08:00.009-05:00

Today's Chicago Tribune includes a feature article titled: CPS fails to close performance gap: Black students still losing academic ground despite reforms, study finds

It leads off saying:

Twenty years of reform efforts and programs targeting low-income families in Chicago Public Schools has only widened the performance gap between white and African-American students, a troubling trend at odds with what has occurred nationally.

Across the city, and spanning three eras of CPS leadership, black elementary school students have lost ground to their white, Latino and Asian classmates in testing proficiency in math and reading, according to a recent analysis by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

It includes a statement saying:

"If school closings destabilized certain neighborhoods, other efforts were ineffective — millions of dollars pumped into countless after-school initiatives and tutoring and mentoring programs geared toward African-American students, only to see math and reading scores languish and many students fall further behind."

I challenge this statement of "countless after-school initiatives and tutoring and mentoring programs".

I've been hosting a database of non-school volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring program serving Chicago and have been using maps to show where these programs are needed, where existing programs are located, and where more dollars are needed to help programs constantly innovate ways to have a greater impact.

I tried to find census maps on the internet today to support this article. Here's one set of maps showing demographic concentrations in the Chicago region. This is from a U.S. Census Grids web site.

Here's a maps showing African American population concentrations in Chicago, created by the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the mid 2000s. On this map we've overlaid locations of poorly performing schools from the 2007 ISBE watch list. From both sets of maps you can see high concentrations of African Americans living in high poverty areas. You can also see a huge number of failing schools.

On this next map you can see locations of different non-school tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago area. You just don't see a large number of programs in many parts of this map. I encourage you to use the Interactive Program Locator and create your own map. Sort by type of program and age group served.
When trying to understand this information you need to think in layers. What is the distribution of tutor/mentor programs serving elementary school kids? Middle school? High school? In each neighborhood programs serving all three groups need to be equally available?

If "millions of dollars had been spent on countless non-school tutor/mentor programs" targeted at African American youth, the map should show many more programs in these neighborhoods than we show.

There may be more. This mapping project has never received funding from the city, the schools or major philanthropy. Thus, there may be programs we don't know about and some of our information is out-of-date. Furthermore, there needs to be many more questions asked, to know more about what these programs have in common, how they differ, what they need to find and retain quality staff and financial support, ways they can constantly improve.

The Tribune story offers a generalization that makes one think that millions of dollars were spent on a comprehensive tutoring/mentoring strategy. Millions may have been spent, but there is no evidence that any strategy has been used to assure that Chicago has a broad distribution of well-organized and constantly improving non-school tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods.

This could change if the Mayor, a foundation or an investor were to become a partner and provide financial support to the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so we can update the maps and launch an aggressive advertising campaign to help existing programs get the funding and talent they need to operate in more places and to constantly improve their impact over the next 10-20 years.

Using Maps in Social Benefit Efforts

2011-11-12T12:18:00.003-05:00

This photo was taken more than 15 years ago, illustrating my long-term commitment to using maps and to supporting the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in all parts of the Chicago region.

Thanks to donations of software and talent along with a major gift of $50,000 in 2007 you can now use an interactive Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to find out if there are volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in different poverty areas of Chicago and you can click on their web site (if they have one) to learn what they do and how to help them.

While this use of maps has been featured in various media and publications, I've not been able to find investors/sponsors/benefactors to provide the money needed to keep the maps updated and working properly nor to launch an on-going advertising campaign in Chicago intended to draw more attention to the maps and teach more people to use them.

You can view a PDF of the map story printed in the USRISA News.

You can also see how our use of mapping idea was recognized by being nominated for a 2004 Award by the Institute for Social Inventions of the Global Ideas Bank.

Yet, due to economic factors, lack of leaders and plain bad luck, we're operating at a minimal level of support to keep this service alive. If you want to help support this work please send a contribution. Read more.

If you'd want to become a partner to help develop this capacity, or want to have "naming rights" to the Program Locator, the Tutor/Mentor Conference or the Tutor/Mentor Institute library, email me at tutormentor 2 @ earthlink dot net.

Veteran's War on Poverty Continues

2011-11-11T12:23:00.004-05:00

This is me, in the fall of 1968 during basic training at Ft. Polk, LA which was the home of infantry being trained to go to Viet Nam.

Lucky for me, I joined the Army in the summer of 1968 after getting a degree in history from Illinois Wesleyan University. I enlisted with a guarantee to be trained to be a SPY! Instead of the infantry I went into Army Intelligence.

I spent a year in Baltimore and Washington, DC and then a year in Korea. It expanded my vision of the world and set the groundwork for what I've been doing in the 40 years since then. I was one of the fortunate ones who did not get wounded or killed by the conflict in Viet Nam.

In 2001 I was given an honorary PhD from Illinois Wesleyan, in recognition of the work I had been doing to help inner-city youth connect with tutors/mentors and experiences beyond the high poverty neighborhoods they were living in.

This work has continued to develop over the past 10 years even as the resources to do it has continued to shrink. I've combined my passion for history and my experiences in Army Intelligence and 17 years of Retail Advertising with the Montgomery Ward Corporation into a market-based strategy aimed at helping mentor-rich non-school organizations reach youth in all high poverty areas of Chicago. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

This is one of the graphics I've created to illustrate the ideas I'm sharing. In the military every General knows that the troops in the field are only as strong as the supply chain that makes sure they are well trained, well armed and well fed...and in the right location. See the story I wrote about this in June 2008.

In business leaders use this thinking all the time to put stores in places where customers can easily reach them. They make sure stores have well-trained staff, merchandise that people want, and they use massive advertising to prompt people to shop on a regular basis.

No such system exists in the tutor/mentor world or in most of the social sector. The "intelligence" needed to gather and analyze data about what programs exist and where they are needed is not funded in any consistent way. The work needed to train young people to be leaders of tutor/mentor programs is not being done at any major college (that I know of). The millions of dollars of advertising needed to draw volunteers and donors to individual programs on a regular basis does not exist.

Thus, the battle-plan needed to win the "war on poverty" is still needed in cities throughout the world.

I would like to encourage Veterans and those who support our men and women in service to spend time today reflecting on what I've just written. Do you have a "battle plan" to reach youth in your community with long-term, mentor-rich programs that assure that more of them will be in jobs and careers and capable of adult responsibilities by the time they are in their mid to late 20s?

Who is doing the "intelligence" gathering for you? Who is doing the advertising? Who is paying for this?

If we keep doing the same thing the same way...

2011-11-09T17:21:00.002-05:00

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Attributed to Albert Einstein.

I've been writing this blog since 2005 and I've been trying to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in the Chicago region since 1993 when I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Over the years I've developed a strong belief that traditional "beg for gift" philanthropy is an ineffective way to generate the continuous flow of resources and the high levels of talent needed to operate a single tutor/mentor program, let alone enough to reach 20-30% of the kids living in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago.

When we launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection our goals were

a) create information about existing programs, where they were needed, what they do, how they differ, who funds them, etc.

b) dramatically increase the number of people looking at that information

c) activities that help people understand the information

d) efforts that lead people to become volunteers, donors, leaders, etc. in each of the different tutor/mentor programs operating in Chicago

While I've had many people give positive feedback I've not found philanthropic investors to provide the capital needed to build organizational strength that would make what I was doing as effective as it needs to be. Part of that was because of an inability to keep donors involved for multiple years. Part of that was due to not having volunteers with enough civic reach involved in this effort. Part of it was not having the resources for advertising and public awareness.

I started following the blog articles written by Dan Pallotta a few years ago. I have a link to them on this web site. I saw references to a book he wrote titled "Uncharitable" but I never had time to read it until I picked it up at the library a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not completely through but in reading it I can see many reasons why I've not been able to find the financial and leadership support I've needed for the past 18 years.

If you have read my blog articles you see I point to the ideas of other people via web links and blog exchanges. The first commitment of the T/MC was to "collect ideas created by other people and to try to get greater circulation of those ideas so more people understood them".

I don't need to originate an idea. If it's good, I just need to find ways more people will look at the idea and try to understand it.

I think Dan Pallotta has some good ideas. Some are so controversial that they can keep you from thinking through some of the other ideas. That's why I've created a map of the chapters of the book. While you're having difficulty getting past some of the first ideas you need to be thinking of some of the other ideas.

So as I'm still moving through the last chapters of Uncharitable I'm saying "How can I help more people begin to read and reflect on this book" so that over a period of years we might build a sub-culture of people who think differently and act differently.

We don't need to change everyone. We need to change a small percent of everyone.

I've not dug into this deeply so if you know of people who are doing what I'm describing, please post a comment and share a link. In his book Pallotta sort of bashes religion for some of their practices regarding charity.

Yet, I think that if someone were to take the various sound bytes out of Dan's book and create a 52 week lesson plan, it could be connected to the 52-week lesson plan of any faith group and included in weekly discussion groups just like people read a passage of scripture then sit and discuss it with small groups of other people.

I created a concept map outlining chapters in Uncharitable and put links to some of Dan Palotta's blog articles, as well as to some written by others. I'd like to find a group who would take ownership of this and put it in a format like Debategraph.org where others could add new links whenever they want.

Obviously I have a self interest in this. I'm trying to find capital that I can invest in the ideas I've generated over 20 years which I think would help an entire industry of volunteer-based, mentor-rich organizations become available in high poverty neighborhoods. I need to find investors who share the vision and are willing to invest in long-term solutions that start with the building of information libraries and interactive technology portals. I've outlined many of the ideas I'm trying to develop in this wiki.

Thus, my goal in bring attention to "Untouchable" is to build a sub-set of leaders and volunteers and investors who will apply these ideas to support my own efforts and those of leaders in hundreds of youth serving organizations throughout the world.

I look forward to connecting with others who have been thinking of ways to change the insanity of what we've been doing now to support our efforts.

Follow up from Tutor/Mentor Conference

2011-11-09T12:47:00.004-05:00

I've been sending the following message to volunteers who hosted workshops last Friday at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago.

Thank you again for presenting a workshop last Friday at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference and for helping me promote the event. About 85 people participated from 45 different organizations. Since 1994 when we launched the conferences more than 1,000 different organizations have been represented.

At http://femioutreach.blogspot.com/2011/11/tutor-mentor-conference.html you can see how one participant has written about her experience at the conference. The photo above is of me and Tramaine Montel Ford, who was a keynote speaker at the conference. Tramaine and I have been connected since the mid 1990s when he was a student at the Cabrini Connections program.

If we can encourage this type of blogging and information-sharing from every participant we can attract more attention to the challenges and opportunities of tutoring/mentoring and do more to build the resources needed for programs to constantly innovate ways to improve.

Attached are the evaluations that were turned in for your workshop. (each presenter was sent PDF copies of their evaluations). Each speaker was also encouraged to join in the online forum at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com and http://debategraph.org/mentoring_kids_to_careers with the goal that we connect to each other and many other people in more depth during the months between conferences and that this motivates more people to come together every six months when we do host future conferences.

I’ll be sending out a conference survey via email to gather feedback. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to respond.

There is much to do and not enough time and money to do it all. I hope you’ll continue to support this effort.

While we connected a small group of people last week this group can become an army for making good things happen if we can connect in on-line communities and add others to this effort.

Dan Bassill
Tutor/Mentor Connection
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

Where are the Good Shepherds?

2011-11-03T20:51:00.005-04:00

I encourage you to read today's John Fountain column in the Chicago SunTimes. It is titled "In time of crisis, where are the good shepherds?"

It starts out with "I hear you, man. . . . But the people perish. And yet, the clergy flourish." It concludes with "I pray, dear pastor, that you will be part of the promised wind of change and restoration. For the people perish."

Between Jan 2008 and March 2011 I was able to create a set of maps showing the location of faith groups in the city and suburbs. I have maps for each different denomination. This one shows them all. Staggering how many there are and we only mapped some of the major denominations.

Our purpose was to provide a tool that faith leaders might use to support the growth of mentor-rich non-school tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods. I created this PDF guide for Faith Leaders with the goal that one or more would adopt it and set an example that others would follow.

Here's an article I wrote several years ago for the Ecumenical Child Care Network.

We have a conference in Chicago tomorrow, Nov. 4. at the Metcalfe Federal Building. If you're interested in becoming an apostle who helps carry this message to the faith leaders, please attend. You can find details at http://www.tutormentorconfernce.org

The faith community has one of the most powerful communications networks in existence. If we can encourage and nurture the growth of learning circles and study groups at different churches, synagogues and mosques those groups can take ownership of the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy and carry it to new levels of impact in future years.

I would love to enlist Mr. Fountain to help me evangelize this message so leaders in different faith groups adopt it. Perhaps in future Tutor/Mentor Conferences he could give awards and recognition to faith leaders who begin to adopt this strategy. I'd also love to enlist the Cardinal and other faith leaders.

There is a 'promised land' and with the help of a few prophets we can show others a path to get there.

Chronic Truancy Jumps in area schools

2011-11-02T10:04:00.004-04:00

Today's Chicago Tribune has a feature showing that truancy is rising in Chicago area schools, which contributes to poor performance, high drop out rates, and a high cost to society and to the young people involved.

One school shown with 56.9% of students chronically truant was Robeson High School, located at South Normal Boulevard on the South Side. I used the http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifChicago Program Locator's Interactive map to zoom into this neighborhood and created this map.

This map shows that there are three organizations trying to reverse this trend in the area around Robeson. One is the Yancy Boys & Girls Club which has developed a partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago. A second is the By the Hand Club for Kids, who on their web site show some impressive statistics.

I did a second map showing the area of Belmont-Cragin Elementary School, located in the Central part of Chicago. This map required a little more effort to make because this school was not included on the 2007 or 2008 list of low performing public schools, thus it's not included in the map on the Program Locator. Since the Tutor/Mentor Connection has had no public or private funding to support this mapping project since a $50,000 gift from an anonymous donor in late 2007 we've not been able to keep updating the mapping and now we have no staff at all to support this resource.

Thus I placed an X on the map to show where Belmont-Cragin is located. You can see that while there is a medium rate of poverty in the area (based on 2000 census info) there are no tutor/mentor programs in the area around the school. If you use the Asset Map feature on the Program locator you could determine if any churches, hospitals, banks or colleges are in the area, who could be helping start such programs.

I have been collecting information about tutor/mentor programs and using maps to show where they are needed and where existing programs are operating since 1993. My goal is to help existing programs connect and learn from each other while creating public attention that would draw more donors and volunteers to support the existing programs or to help new ones form where they are needed.

I have hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference every year since 1994 to encourage programs to network and share ideas. Obviously the Boys & Girls Clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters and By the Hand Club have some expertise they could share with others....if they were to make time to participate in the conferences.

There are many organizations in Chicago who have much to share, and much to learn. We all need more resources to support the work we do and constantly improve based on what we learn from our own efforts and the efforts of peers. Yet if we can't find time to connect and share ideas and work together to build the pool of resources available to do this work, it's unlikely that we'll ever have more than a few good tutor/mentor programs working to help more youth succeed in school and in life.

There's still time to register for Friday's conference. The web site is www.tutormentorconference.org

Email to friend - from conference speaker

2011-11-01T09:27:00.003-04:00

Here's an email sent by one of the workshop presenters who will be sharing information at this Friday's Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago. Ithttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif's an example of how others can take a role in bringing people together at the May and November conferences.

--------------------------------

Hi Jerry and all, I share some news from Chicago about my workshop and
related interests. Perhaps we'll have ideas... Andrius
-----------------------

I'm leading a workshop at the Tutor / Mentor Leadership Conference this Friday, November 4, 2011, 9:40-10:45 am, at the Metcalf Federal Building,
77 W Jackson Boulevard in Chicago, Illinois.
http://tutormentorconference.org/agenda.asp
http://tutormentorconference.org/descriptions.asp

I ask us to spread the word and to think, What do we truly want to learn?

The conference is organized by Daniel Bassill. At this time, it costs $80. The goal is to connect leaders and supporters of volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring and education-to-career programs, especially in the Chicago area. I got involved because of my interest to make a living from a Learning Club.

Currently, I'm working part-time after school as a chess instructor for Chess Scholars http://www.chessscholars.com I'm also working online for
http://www.brainfuse.com to help students with their homework through a system of chat, white board and lessons. The advantage of that work is that I can likely do it from anywhere, including Lithuania.

However, I'd like to find a more meaningful way to make a living. I like the idea of a Learning Club where I would meet on an ongoing basis with twenty or more families to help them learn. They might pay $50 per month. I believe that we can develop an education system based on what people truly want to learn. I can also apply my creative skills to create learning materials in the Public Domain for Math, English and other subjects. If I could make a Learning Club work, then potentially there could be thousands or millions of people making a living from them and transforming our education system and even our economy.

I currently have one student, an adult learning math, and she's happy. The major obstacle is finding a place where such a Learning Club would be welcome, given that I wish to make a living from it.

I entitled my workshop, "Nurturing the Art of Self-Learning", but I think more to the point is the question, "What do we truly want to learn?"

Daniel Bassill's goal is to open up career opportunities for disadvantaged youth and young adults. I don't believe in careers, in the traditional sense, and I don't look to them as solutions for our society. Instead, I wish that we could learn what we truly want to learn, and learn alongside each other.

Likewise, I do think that we exhibit different levels of maturity as self-learners. Yet instead of formalizing roles of "tutor/mentor" and "student", I prefer to learn alongside each other, as much as possible, and work towards a culture where we are all learning and helping each other learn. One thing that I'm discovering as a chess instructor is that I can keep attentive 10 or more youngster of different grade levels (1st through 5th, say, or 3rd through 7th) by teaching as deeply, profoundly as possible, so that not everybody understands everything all the time, but their not bored, and the deep ideas grow in their minds like seeds, springing to life later on.

I think, therefore, that it's important for our own credibility that we ourselves be great learners. I will start with the 12 questions that I've asked independent thinkers in my years of organizing them (see below). I'll ask us to share our answers especially to two of them:

* What is your deepest value in life, which includes all of your other values?
* What is a question that you don't know the answer to, but wish to answer? and also a few more:

* What is your dream in life?
* What do you wish to achieve?
* What lessons can you share?

I'm making a poncho on which I'm painting a backdrop based on my diagram of some 40 questions asked by participants of Occupy Chicago. http://www.occupyme.net/chicago/wiki/Ask/Everybody I'll be able to include (with velcro) our "questions that we don't know the answer to, but wish to answer".

We'll discuss synergies that suggest themselves, including those that might relate younger and older people.

We'll also discuss obstacles that keep us from enjoying these synergies,
notably:

* We don't believe that we can ever answer the big questions. I'll argue otherwise, noting my directory of "ways of figuring things out". http://www.selflearners.net/ways/
* We don't believe that others could care about what we do. This is a big problem!

We'll discuss how art projects can help us engage each other.
* We can't make a living from such activity. And if we could, then others would refuse to help us be "profitable".

I hope to learn from our discussion, both online and at my workshop!

Thank you,

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
ms@ms.lt
(773) 306-3807
http://www.selflearners.net
http://www.occupyme.net

Big Conferences in Chicago this week

2011-10-31T09:36:00.003-04:00

Sunday through Tuesday in Chicago will feature two huge conferences. One is the Independent Sector Conference The other is the Social Enterprise Alliance Conference.

At the end of the week, on Friday, Nov. 4, is the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference.

The schedule for the Independent Sector Conference show many topics related to the challenges and opportunities of philanthropy.

Look at the schedule of breakout sessions for the Social Enterprise Alliance Conference. Seems like some of the same themes are being discussed, with different tax structure and strategies for generating revenue being the main difference.

If you registered early you could have attended the Independent Sector Conference for only $1,050 (not including hotel and travel). If you register this week the fee is $1,600. The price for the Social Enterprise Summit was a bit lower, but still more than I could afford.

If you look at the range of workshops in both events I don't see any that focus on ways to make non-school volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs available in high poverty neighborhoods of big cities like Chicago, or ways to help each program learn from others doing similar work. I don't see anything focused on building the talent in these programs or helping volunteers and young people become leaders.

Look at the agenda for the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, which is being held on Friday, Nov. 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago. We don't have as many workshops, but since you can only go to one in each time frame, what difference does it matter if we have five workshops, or 15 in a time frame? We do focus all of our attention on helping tutor/mentor programs become the best they can be.

Thus, I hope some of the people who were able to attend the big conferences at the start of the week will go to the small conference at the end and that the ideas from all three conferences will connect in ways that generate resources, talent and structure that supports the growth of an entire universe of birth-to-work volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities.

Technology in the Classroom. What's the Impact?

2011-10-29T11:33:00.003-04:00

I'm a big fan of using computers and the internet to work smarter, faster and to expand my network of people and ideas. I feel that if young people learn some of these skills the problems that they face in the future have a better chance of being solved.

However, this is not necessarily how technology in the classroom is being evaluated. Here is a link to a Sept. 3 2011 article from the New York Times titled In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores

It's worth reading. What are your thoughts?

Who Mentored You? How Can you Repay?

2011-10-26T16:35:00.006-04:00

Tramane Montel Ford (in yellow shirt in this photo) got his first taste of acting in 1995 when he became part of the video group at Cabrini Connections. On August 7th he performed his new show, The Tramaine Experience: A One Man Show, and raised money so we can help other kids have similar experiences.

Isaiah Brooms became part of the tutoring/mentoring program in the late 1980s while it was at Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters. A couple of year ago he was a Keynote Speaker at the November 2009 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, where he told how his life has taken a positive direction because of the support he received from his mentor, and the tutoring/programs he was part of. Here's the full transcript of his presentation.

Tangela Smith Marlow is another alumni from the Cabrini Connections program. She was the speaker at the June 2010 year end dinner.

Year-End Dinner 2010: Tangela Marlowe from Cabrini Connections on Vimeo.

Tramaine will be one of the speakers during the noon hour next Friday, November 4th as we host the 36th Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference since May 1994.

If you've hosted this many conferences and led a tutor/mentor program for over 35 years you must have learned a lot. You also must be getting old!

Both are true. That's why I'm trying to invite youth who have been part of tutor/mentor programs to come together at these conferences and on our social media pages. I want to pass on what I and others have learned to a new generation of leaders who know from their own experiences how important a tutor/mentor program can be in their lives.

If you know of someone who has been mentored, or who has been a volunteer, ask them what they are doing now to make sure this experience is available to others. Encourage them to visit the conference web site and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site and begin to learn ways they can pick up this baton of leadership and carry it for a few more laps.

Tipping Points, Influence and more

2011-10-24T13:55:00.006-04:00

I created this graphic over the weekend as another attempt to communicate visually what I have been trying to do for the past 18 years, in fact all the way back to 1975 when I first started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program.

I firmly believe that connecting a youth with a non-family adult in a structured, on-going tutor/mentor program is a good thing. It has an influence on both the youth and the adult but in so many different ways that it is difficult to quantify. I'm not trying to recruit those who don't believe. I'm trying to connect with the thousands of people who have already been part of tutor/mentor programs at some point in their lives and already know how they have been enriched in big or small ways as a result.

In order for these programs to reach youth in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago and to involve volunteers who work full-time jobs in many different industries the programs need to operate in non-school hours and in places where youth and volunteers feel safe participating. In such places the program/organization itself becomes part of the mentoring process. It sets a tradition that connects past, current and future participants of that program.

In a city like Chicago with close to 200,000 youth living in high poverty neighborhoods there needs to be hundreds of small tutor/mentor programs serving k-12 youth. For such programs to grow in more places teams of leaders need to step forward who act as a 'virtual corporate office'. They do things that people in the corporate offices at WalMart, Sears, McDonalds and other big companies do everyday to support multiple stores in many locations.

If we know who the existing programs are then we can lower their costs of operating and we can enhance the quality of their work if we can influence the flow of operating dollars directly to each program and if we can influence the flow of manpower and talent to each program. If programs have access to capital for innovation and if they have talented people learning ways to get better by learning from what other programs are already doing, then we can also enhance the quality of every program by collecting and sharing ideas that can be used by any program at any time.

Every big city in the world has areas with high poverty where the gaps between rich and poor are growing wider every year. That means there could be teams and leaders in every city trying to collect information about existing organizations and trying to influence the flow of dollars, talent and ideas to all of the programs in their cities.

I have hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference every six months since 1994 to help stimulate the sharing of ideas among leaders of programs and to build greater visibility for tutoring/mentoring that would drive more donors and volunteers to each of the programs in the city. The next conference is Friday, November 4 and because of my own lack of dollars and the few leaders in Chicago who embrace this strategy, I'm still trying to build attendance for next week's event.

The map below shows the goals of the conference. If you can't join me in Chicago why not join me in this forum?

If you are someone who already believes in this logic and sees that you could take a role in influencing the flow of resources to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago or your own community, let's find a way to connect.

Business Case for Supporting Mentoring

2011-10-19T13:00:00.002-04:00

This PDF report titled "Building critical social infrastructure: The business case for expanding support for school based mentoring in Australia" is focused on school-based mentoring in Australia yet could be used by any city in the US to build support for school-based and non-school mentoring strategies.

The National Youth Mentoring Benchmarks, starting on page 30 of the report, can be used by any mentoring organization as standards of excellence to shoot for.

During the Nov. 4 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago, Dr. Clara Carter, former Director of Training for the Maryland Mentoring Partnership, will host a workshop focusing on "The Elements of Effective Practice" shared by MENTOR, the National Mentoring Partnership.

If you're building or trying to sustain a mentoring strategy you are encouraged to attend the conference and this workshop.

Million Mentors Mobilization

2011-10-19T12:47:00.002-04:00

This video is part of a campaign to mobilize mentors for youth in cities across America. As you view this and are motivated to get involved, browse the articles on this web site to expand your thinking on what mentoring can do to impact the lives of youth and what business, churches, celebrities and others can do to make sure resources are consistently available to help these programs grow.
Come to the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference on Friday, Nov. 4 to network and learn strategies to support the growth of constantly improving mentoring programs.

Turn words into actions to help reduce drop out rate

2011-10-15T11:59:00.005-04:00

On Wednesday I posted my first summary of the National Dropout Prevention Conference in this article.

Here are some quotes from people I heard.

"Shame of American Education is the drop-out problem." Dr. Daniel Domenech

"1600 high schools in America responsible for majority of droputs in US." (see this info on Locating the Dropout Crisis)Dr. Daniel Domenech

"You don't have a right to leave this earth till you give something back." Dr. Debbie Silver

"African American children comprise 17% of the youth population, but 34% of all school based suspensions and 45% of all juvenile arrests."

You can find more statistics like this on many different web sites. However, where can you find maps and marketing strategies intended to increase the number of people looking at this information and increase the distribution of operating dollars to schools and non-school mentoring and learning centers in all of the high dropout school areas?

I've been inviting people in Chicago to look at this information and connect via the May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference for over 15 years. I've attended events hosted by others and encouraged them to connect their conferences and forums with me and each other via the Internet.

For the most part this has been like spreading seed on rocks and deserts. Yet, after just meeting for a brief while on Skype, David Prince helped me set up this "mentoring kids to careers" discussion on the Debategraph portal that he hosts in the UK. David posted this introduction to the Tutor/Mentor Institute blog article earlier this week.

Anyone in the world, or in Chicago, can use this forum to innovate ways to increase the number of people and donors who support dropout area schools and non-school learning centers. Anyone can log in and add new information to this map, or create their own set of maps showing their own ideas of how to end the dropout crisis.

When I say "anyone" I mean that billionaires, sports stars, rock musicians, high school clubs, politicians, etc. can use this. If some do, perhaps they will begin to apply the ideas using their own time and talent to help more kids to careers.

Interested? Come to the November 4 Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference in Chicago. Join us on-line in the Debategraph forum, or in the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

Building Community. Focusing on Drop Out Crisis

2011-10-12T20:06:00.004-04:00

I attended the National Dropout Prevention Conference this week along with about 700 other people from around the country. I was a workshop presenter at 8am Monday morning and spent the rest of the time networking with a wide range of people. I want to thank Ed Bates of the Lake County Regional Office of Education for encouraging me to participate. Ed was a co-chair of the conference organizing committee.

I created this concept map to introduce you to the people and organizations I met through workshops, sitting at lunch together and attending a dinner event on Monday. Over the next couple of weeks I'll post some quotes from some of the presentations and I'll reach out to the people I met and invite them to share their workshop presentations so you can learn more about what they talked about.

In this map I also pointed to other information I'd already aggregated about the Drop-out Crisis which is posted in the Tutor/Mentor Library. The real challenge is not finding more ideas, but finding ways to draw more people together to understand and apply these ideas in more places.

A couple of weeks ago I was part of an "Improving the Education System" panel hosted by Becoming We the People and held at The First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park. While the attendance was around a dozen people this was recorded and posted on YouTube so it is available to many more people than the number at this week's conference.

In three week's (Friday, November 4) I'll host the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference and the goal will be the same as these other events. We need to find ways to surround youth in poverty areas where the dropout rate is the highest with mentors, tutors and extra learning and enrichment opportunities so we help build aspirations and prepare more youth to come to school every day better prepared to learn.

If you're concerned with the dropout crisis and see mentoring as part of the solution I encourage you to help me build attendance for the Nov. 4 conference. One of the panel discussions will be recorded by Becoming We the People and available on YouTube in the weeks following the conference.

Tribute to Steve Jobs.

2011-10-07T11:53:00.003-04:00

The Web is full of tributes to Steve Jobs, who died this week. I've used Apple computers since the early 1980s so everything I do and write about has been influenced in some way by his work.

In today's paper I read one quote saying "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

This is very similar to a quote from Merri Dee of WGN TV that I've borrowed and used for over 18 years. "If it is to be, it is up to me."

In another article I read about "Apple U.: A degree in Jobs". In this article the writer talks about how Jobs created a training program within Apple to teach new leaders to think and act like he did. Wow.

Last January I wrote an article titled The Problem is not Schools, It's Poverty. I wrote a similar article earlier this week.

In the January article I pointed to the Broad Foundation who has set up The Broad Center to educate principles, superintendents and others and place them in school districts all over the country.

If you've read many of my articles you can see how I'm looking for a benefactor who would combine the thinking of Apple U with that of the Broad Foundation and create a Tutor/Mentor Institute that would educate leaders from all sectors to use the ideas available via the Internet to design and implement long-term strategies that help kids in poor neighborhoods get the extra supports needed to move through school and into 21st century careers.

In this Tipping Points essay which I wrote more than five years ago I point out the need for new strategies to provide leadership for the thousands of non-school organizations that need to be available in cities across the world.

The only way to make this happen is to find visionary leaders with single-minded determination and unlimited energy who say "We'll Build It. They Will Come."

Economic inequality: The real cause of the urban school problem

2011-10-06T10:26:00.010-04:00

Today in the Chicago Tribune is a commentary titled: Economic inequality: The real cause of the urban school problem This was written by economists from Harvard and the University of California at Berkley.

The authors write, "Our findings show that the root of the problems facing urban schools can be found in gradual but extremely powerful changes in the nation's economy — not the least of which is the increasingly unequal distribution of family incomes."

I've been using maps since 1993 to try to show this income inequality and the connection between high poverty concentrations and poorly performing schools. We include maps in many of the articles we've written on this blog and in the MappingforJustice blog. Our interactive Program Locator can be used to create your own map story for your own communications.

Every time I've hosted a leadership conference in Chicago (the next is November 4) I've put maps on easels to help others see the power of these as a tool to focus attention and resources to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in all high poverty neighborhoods.

I've tried to get attention of leaders who've attended the conferences so they would incorporate maps and our strategy of volunteer-based tutor/mentor program growth into their own leadership.

Today there was another editorial in the Tribune, challenging the way TIFF money seemed to go to charities favored by the Mayor and his wife.

If the Mayor had incorporated T/MC maps into his efforts to help kids in poverty perhaps the aldermen, state legislators and others would do the same. Were that happening there would now be a much stronger distribution of high-quality tutor/mentor programs in all of the poverty areas of the city and suburbs and perhaps there would be a different future for some of the youth who have grown up in neighborhoods of high poverty and under-performing schools.

That's the past. We have a new Mayor and we have another presidential election. We have new research. Now can we interest some of the leaders and people who are concerned with poverty and its impact on the economy and quality of life for all of the people in the region to participate in the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference on Friday, Nov. 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building?

Can someone step forward to become the Steve Jobs who bring vision and financing to the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to help build tutor/mentor program support infrastructure in Chicago and other cities?

Tutor/Mentor Conference, Nov. 4, 2011

2011-10-03T10:26:00.005-04:00

I've been building a Directory of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs since 1993 and have hosted a networking conference every six months since May 1994.

The article below is one of many that have been written as a result of this strategy. This one was from the Daily Southtown. It includes a message (see pdf) that I've been delivering consistently for 18 years of mobilizing resources to support high quality tutor/mentor programs in all poverty neighborhoods of Chicago, not just one or two high quality programs in a few places. In 1995 I was optimistic that I could find enough philanthropic investment to build and sustain the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Due to economic factors, the 9/11 tragedy, wars on terrorism, etc. we've not been able to raise consistent funding for operations and innovation. This past summer I had to create the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC as a new strategy to find the revenue, partners and investment to do what I've not been able to do as well as needs be for the past 18 years.

Yet, we're still here. If you search for "tutor mentor" on Google or Bing our web sites come up on the first page and are a resource to people all over the world.

The Nov. 4 conference has a great agenda. If we can attract 75-100 paying participants (we keep fees low, give group rates and offer scholarships at $20....and all speakers attend at no cost), we can cover our expenses and provide some money to support the data collection, web sites and other costs of hosting the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Yet we won't thrive until we find an investor willing to put his/her name on the conference, or the mapping site, or the Tutor/Mentor Institute itself. That would take a multi-year commitment of several million dollars. Yet it would do more to help inner city kids to careers than much of the billions that have spent so far over the past 20 years.

Get Seniors OnLine

2011-09-30T16:48:00.005-04:00

This image is what I first saw when I visited Don Samuelson's Get Seniors Online blog today. I've known Don for more than 12 years but it wasn't until we had lunch today that I learned of this blog. It's quite interesting. And it gets regular feedback which I'd like to see more of on my own blog.

The focus of Don's blog is to help seniors learn the basic skills of navigating the internet high way, so that with their "Drivers License" they can take of on life-long learning road trips of their own choosing.

My interest is to provide a road map so that some of the seniors who already are online, or will get online because of what Don is doing will find the Tutor/Mentor Institute blog and web site and will begin to use the information posted to expand the role they take in making mentor rich, technology rich, non-school learning programs available to youth in high poverty neighborhoods all over the country.

In one blog post Don wrote he asked "What is the potential $$ value to seniors themselves?" from being an online senior? How might this affect healthcare costs, costs of entitlement programs, economic well-being, mental health? One respondent to Don's post said "It's Priceless" and went on to say "And what is the value to the resident who was closeted in her apartment and now she has come out for awareness raising and training, and is engaged in learning, saying hello to fellow residents, and is starting on her road back to "being connected?"

I'd go a step further and as "How much more value might be gained by connecting the talent, wisdom, love and involvement of a growing number of seniors in helping youth who need extra adults in their lives have places to connect with adults from 18 to 100?

I look forward to connecting Don's world of Seniors OnLine with my world of Tutor/Mentor Institute. I hope you'll join in.

Innocent teen killed in Maywood. What Can Be Done?

2011-09-28T16:45:00.008-04:00

Today the Chicago SunTimes and the Chicago Tribune both included stories about a 14 year old teen killed while she slept in her home by a car that http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcrashed into the house as a result of the driver being shot.

This story is tragic, but it also is personal. The teen was part of the Maywood Youth Mentoring Program that has been led by Barbara Cole for many years. Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection I've tried to help Barbara build the program she leads so it can help more teens. This program has also been aided by Michael Romain, who also volunteers time to write about the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Below is a map showing the 7th Congressional District that was created last year during the campaign to elect a new Chicago Mayor. This map was created several years ago to illustrate ways that leaders in different political districts should be working with business, faith groups, and other elected bodies to help build and sustain a wide range or mentor-rich youth programs in the high poverty parts of the district.

While the SunTimes devoted a half page to the tragedy in Maywood, they devoted two pages on Tuesday and another two-pages today to talk about the tragedy taking place in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. They've focused on Murray Park as a symbol of the lack of safe places for kids to play and build skills during the non-school hours. I've created maps of Englewood in the past. The one below is from the Interactive Map on the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.

In the Interactive Program Locator each green star represents the name of an organization that offers some form of tutoring and/or mentoring. Some have web sites and you can learn more what they do. Some don't.

We intend the Program Locator and our maps as a tool for leaders. Anyone can look at the map of the 7th District and see that there are very few programs and they are not in every part of the district. Same for Englewood.

I've been hosting a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference every six months. My goal is to bring people together to talk about where tutor/mentor programs are needed and to share ideas and strategies that can help existing programs grow. However, the goal is also to create reasons for newspaper reporters to write stories about tutoring/mentoring and to help us draw more people to the conferences and to the list or programs we host so more people learn to become volunteers and donors helping each tutoring and/or mentoring program constantly improve in an effort to be 'world class' in what they do. The story below was written in November 1996 by Ray Coffey of the Chicago SunTimes.

The next conference is Friday, November 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago. You can see more stories written as a result of the conferences and other actions of the Tutor/Mentor Connection at this link.

I hope some of you will forward this information to bloggers and media writers so new stories will be created. I hope you'll also encourage people in business, media, philanthropy and who lead tutor/mentor programs to register and attend so more people will be working to change what is happening in Maywood, Englewood and many other neighborhoods of this country.

Conference November 4 - Media Stories

2011-09-23T09:58:00.004-04:00

As I'm reaching out to invite people to participate in the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, which will be held on November 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago, I've been pulling media stories from past conferences. Here are a few. Click on the image to enlarge.

Chicago Tribune story from the first conference in May 1994.

This was from the second conference held in November 1994 at the Shedd Acquarium

This was a Chicago Defender story in May 1995

In recent years most of our communications have been through blogs and email and we've not had as many stories in local papers. Yet the issues of education, poverty, wealth-gaps, workforce readiness and diversity continue to grow more critical. It's time for more people to help with telling the story and pulling people together to learn ways to build and sustain high quality volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in more places.

There is a 'master plan' - for saving youth

2011-09-20T11:41:00.007-04:00

Below is an article written in 1995 by John McCarron and published in the Chicago Tribune. The headline says ""Just as we spectators settle back to enjoy the annual blame game, safe in the knowledge that it's all about somebody elses kids, along comes a Chicago businessman named Daniel Bassill with a very unsettling proposition." In this article McCarron wrote about the May 1995 Tutor/Mentor Conference, which was only the third that I had hosted since we launched the T/MC in 1993 -- and which I've hosted every six months since then. He wrote "For companies, "Bassill said, "tutoring can be a staff development tool. It's a way to broaden an employee's scope within the organization. And to develop leadership skills."

Below is another article, this time that was in Crain's Chicago Business in 1998. The headline was "A 'trade group' that distributes knowledge to kids"
This article included a quote saying, "In Chicago, there are just 12,000 kids in after-school tutoring programs. That's out of 500,000 school-aged kids." That information was drawn from a 1997 survey conducted by Human Capital Research Corporation, Associated Colleges of Illinois and the Tutor/Mentor Connection and focused on "structured volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs".

The number of kids in Chicago Public Schools has lowered to around 400,000 now, but the problem has not changed. There still is no intermediary organization and business leadership working to build a distribution of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs operating in high poverty neighborhoods and connecting business ideas, technology, volunteers and jobs with kids as early as in elementary school.

While these are two of many articles that have been written about my efforts, I've never been able to build the philanthropic or business investment to do all of what we've wanted to do to support this effort. I've created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in an effort to expand the ways I find partners and revenue and I'm hosting the next Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago on Nov. 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building.

If you want to inject new energy and needed capital into this effort, or adopt it in your own city, then become a conference sponsor, or participate and learn ways you can become involved in the future.

How do we connect with this talent?

2011-09-14T16:02:00.001-04:00

If you've followed what I write you see my passion for visualization. However, my work is crude compared to what you see in this video. How can we connect with this talent and focus some of their effort on our goals?

How did Edison do it?

2011-09-14T14:50:00.003-04:00

Imagine yourself 100 years ago listening to Thomas Edison talking about the need for an electricity industry and infrastructure to enable light bulbs to be in every home, street corner and business of the country.

Most people at that time did not know what a light bulb was. How many were thinking of transformers and power plants and all the thousands of little details that add up to today's giant electricity industry.

I face the same challenge. Maybe you can help me communicate this better. To me the "light bulb" is a tutor/mentor program. We still don't have a 100% proven method of connecting youth and volunteers in non-school neighborhood tutor/mentor programs of high poverty neighborhoods in ways that result transforming the life and future of the youth, and the volunteer. We probably have a hundred different definitions of what we mean when we say "transforming the life".

Yet, these programs won't be in most of the places they need to be and they won't have the resources to hire and retain quality staff to support tutors/mentors and student, or to support the operations of the organization, unless we create an industry dedicated to this purpose.

Is this something you're thinking about? Now, how can if earn some revenue to pay my own bills, and cover the costs of the ideas we generate and the tools we've developed at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net while helping you apply this thinking to your own industry-development effort?

If you were Edison, how would you describe what you're doing and what you want others to do to help you?

New School Year. New Role. Same Goals.

2011-09-13T09:37:00.004-04:00

This is the first time in 37 years that I've not led a tutor/mentor program and been organizing student and volunteer orientations this week. As I've written in these articles I'm no longer directly involved in leading the Cabrini Connections program. Yet this week and next week they and almost every other tutor/mentor program in the country will be going through the annual ritual of interviewing and screening students and volunteers, organizing orientations, and doing the initial matches and start up activities that launch the new school year.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which was formed in 1993, I've tried to help these programs get volunteers and operating dollars. I've tried to help them find and use information they can use for training and supporting volunteers. I've aggregated information the students and volunteers can use in their own weekly activities.

I've created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to provide some structure to continue this work. Read the blog articles I've written in the past month and in past years and you'll see that my commitment to helping inner city youth from birth to work has not changed, just my financial resources and ability to support this effort.

If you're reading this article please keep this visual image in mind. Every tutor/mentor program in your community needs the same resources. Not everyone can be a one-on-one or group tutor or mentor. However there are many ways everyone in the entire metropolitan area can help build visibility for these programs, provide infrastructure support, and provide the operating dollars each program needs to build and sustain strong on-going programs.

Visit the Program Locator and use the maps or search screen to find information about tutoring and/or mentoring programs in the Chicago region. Research the programs. Learn what they do. Make a commitment to help one or many.

If you find out of date information or if you know of programs not in the directory email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net to help me keep the information updated. If you're a tech person/company become my partner and help me develop and maintain these tools. If you want recognition become a sponsor and help me hire staff to do this work.

I'm not leading a single tutor/mentor program as we start this new year. I am continuing to lead a strategy intended to help high-quality and constantly improving tutor/mentor programs reach youth in more high poverty areas.

I need your help. So do each tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and in other cities.

Good luck to all of you as you launch this new school year.

How can one person change the future?

2011-09-12T11:36:00.008-04:00

I created this graphic a few weeks ago to illustrate an idea. This is an image of the universe showing thousands of stars. Think of these as the people we pass as we journey from birth do death in our lifetimes. How many are influenced by our ideas and actions?

I've been reading a series of Wheel of Time Books written by Robert Jordan. The term Ta'veren (pronounced: tah-VEER-ehn) describes "people around whom the Wheel of Time specifically weaves the Pattern with all surrounding life-threads."

Imagine if more of us were "Ta'veren" and as we went through life our actions influenced what others do. This graphic illustrates that concept.

As we enter the new school year there are countless numbers of people in the US and around the country writing about poverty, education, workforce development, urban violence, social justice. Many are highly visible leaders and celebrities. Many have huge amounts of wealth.

I am just me. I'm a grain of sand on the ocean floor -- and likely just as invisible and Un-noticed. Even if I had wealth, power and influence I could never be engaged in all of the discussions that are taking place. No one can.

Yet, I believe I and others acting like me can help shape the future. I've written about network building in articles like this and many others that you can find in the archives of this blog.

In addition I've constantly looked for ways to add my ideas into places hosted by others. This Debategraph form is the most recent example.

If enough of us put our ideas and work-plans on web sites and connect with each others in on-line portals we can expand our network. When we do connect in face-to-face events these can serve as "sparks" to ignite our imagination and as reinforcement to help us continue in our work.

I've done this for 35 years and via the Internet for the past 13 years. I know many who are following these ideas and have found many to help me in various ways. I hope more will connect with me in the Nov. 4 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago or through one of these on-line communities.

We can all help shape the future.

Creating Learning Communities - Role of Interns

2011-09-08T11:47:00.005-04:00

The problems society faces are complex and will take the work of many people working collectively for many years to even make a dent in some of them. That's why it is so important to begin to engage young people in this process.

Young people will become old people in a short span of life and if they begin learning to use the internet for problem solving, team building, and advertising they can build skills that will become more and more powerful as they do grow older.

Below is a graphic created by Sam Lee, and intern with me in spring 2011.

This has all the key ideas shared in this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute site. It shows people forming into groups, based on what their occupation is, where they went to college, what faith they are part of, etc. These groups use maps to understand where poverty is most concentrated, what assets are in different areas, and what ways they can inspire people every day to provide time, talent and operating dollars for one, or many, tutor/mentor programs to operate in Chicago or any other city.

The graphic below was also created by Sam and shows that our aim is to constantly increase the number of people who are looking at this problem, looking at the research and ideas available on the internet, and innovating actions that make volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs available and more effective in more places.

This type of work has been done by interns working with Tutor/Mentor Connection since 2006. I coach the work in groups on our Ning Forum, such as this one.

As we start the new school year and reflect on the 9/11 tragedy I hope that sponsors will come forward to help me develop a platform where interns from high schools and colleges all over the world are doing what Sam Lee and our interns have been doing since 2006.

The result can be more people connecting with people and places where poverty created disadvantage and more people working consistently to create bridges of empathy and understanding where people on both sides learn and benefit.

Extending our Empathy - role of Mentoring

2011-09-07T11:14:00.003-04:00

I encourage you to view this video.

Then tale a look at some of the ideas I've been sharing on this blog and in the Tutor/Mentor Institute. If we want to expand the empathetic world what are the steps that some of us, or many of us, need to take to bring more people into this type of world?

I've focused on volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring because of the way it connects people who don't live in poverty with places in neighborhoods with high poverty and with young people who live in those neighborhoods. If the volunteer is well supported because the tutor/mentor program is well funded and has effective, experienced leaders, I feel the volunteer will grow his/her understanding and begin to see the world the youth lives in through the ideas and experiences of the youth.

This creates empathy that leads many volunteers to sacrifice more time, talent and even dollars to help the youth overcome the challenges his world of poverty creates.

This graphic and video illustrates this growth.

Right now tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities are recruiting youth and volunteers and doing the screening, orientations and training that start the annual mentoring cycle. You can use the Tutor/Mentor Program locator to find contact information for places in the Chicago region where you can become a tutor/mentor and where you can offer your talent as tech support, communication, PR and marketing, or as an evaluator or book keeper.

There are lots of ways to get involved. If we want to expand this empathic world it starts with the first steps we each take today or tomorrow.

Labor Day - Creating Jobs

2011-09-05T12:21:00.007-04:00

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 prepare for future jobs and careers?

In numerous articles being written this Labor Day weekend the unemployment rate is stated as being between 9% and 16% reflecting people out of work, no longer looking, or under employed. See this column by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago SunTimes.

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 (discussion forum) contains a variety of articles worth reading. As does this section (research library).

One article I found today is titled Overcoming Intergenerational Poverty. The writer 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.

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 survey 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 Chicago, 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?

I’m 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.

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?

Ten Years Ago -Just Prior to 9/11

2011-09-02T13:51:00.010-04:00

10 years ago I was preparing to go to Illinois Wesleyan to receive an honorary PhD recognizing my work connecting youth and volunteers. This photo is from that ceremony. Minor Myers, jr., President of IWU in the 1990s was one of my strongest supporters. He wrote in one note, "You've done this so well it strikes me you could provide a service to other major cities. This is first class work."

At the same time, I’d just been appointed to the Illinois Commission on Volunteering and Community Service by Governor George Ryan. His wife was the honorary chairperson for the annual Chicago area August/September Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign that we had organized since 1995. This photo is from a press conference where Paul Vallas, CEO of Chicago Public Schools also showed his support.

In 1999 I had received the Good As Gold Award from Publisher’s Clearing House on a Dec. 31 national telecast of the Montel Williams TV Show. We had received other awards prior to this and we've received other awards and recognition since.

Even though the stock market had begun to plunge and we had lost our major sponsor, the Montgomery Ward Corporation, things looked good for Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

That was 10 years ago. Only a week later came the 9/11 attack on America and the beginning of a decade of struggles for us and millions of others around the world. Last December I wrote a series of blog articles and created this PDF report showing how we had continued to build connections between youth and volunteers and expand our network of tutor/mentor programs despite severe financial challenges.

Then in April the Board of Directors of Cabrini Connections voted to no longer support the combined strategy of a local program and a global strategy. Read announcement. I was given ownership of the ideas and assets of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and resigned my role as President and CEO in late July.

Since then I’ve formed Tutor/Mentor Institute LLC with the goal of continuing to support the work of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago while helping similar groups form in other cities. This concept map shows this strategy and points to some of the people I’m reaching out to as well as the talent I will need over the next 10 years to have the impact I wrote about in this article http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2009/09/no-i-did-not-win-macarthur-award-but.html

The world has changed since ten years ago but the courage of some people who want to create a better world has only been strengthened. Through the Internet the networks of people who share ideas and learn from each other has grown dramatically, as have the tools for collective action.

This photo shows a montage of people who have been part of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections in the past. This video illustrates how networks can be mapped to show constellations of people and groups focusing on common goals.

With luck, faith, and an abundance of optimism I intend to recognize 9/11 the way I did when the original attack took place 10 years ago. I’ll be sitting at my computer trying to connect people and ideas that might prevent such terrorism in the first place while keeping my ear to the events taking place and praying for the survival of those who have been so terribly impacted by the man-made and natural disasters of the past 10 years.

I own much to my own family for my ability to do this work. My daughter was born the year I first launched the tutoring program at Wards as a non profit. My son was born in 1997. They have grown up while I've been spending countless hours trying to help "other people's kids". My wife has carried much of the load on the family front. I hope they realize when they are older how what I do is intended to create a better future for them, not just of "other people's kids".

Managing Complexity

2011-08-26T13:35:00.006-04:00

As we move from an industrial economy to an information economy we are dealing with much greater complexity. That's what this video is describing. Read about The Complexity Challenge.

As you read about the role of leaders in complex industries, look at this graphic and how the information that we share on this blog and Tutor/Mentor Institute web sites can support the involvement of many organizations in actions that build systems of support for inner city youth.

In this article "Malcolm Gladwell says that if you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours." In the article above the author says "transform or don't survive". This is a critical issue for business leader. While I'm sure many companies are spending millions of dollars on training programs, learning these skills requires motivation and hands-on experiences. My own learning and thinking has come from my 17 years involvement as a volunteer while working for the Montgomery Ward Corporation in 1973-1990 then the past 20 years as leader of a non profit.

My motivation to learn is driven by my passion for the cause. It's never been the paycheck.

If companies are looking for competitive advantage, or ways to survive in this new complex knowledge economy, why not encourage employees to learn to manage complexity through the volunteer roles they take with social sector organizations who are using the most recent business technology to support the learning and involvement of staff and volunteers in their organizations.

Embed the Tutor/Mentor Institute in your organization and let us help you develop this strategy.

Naming Rights? Why not?

2011-08-25T12:06:00.006-04:00

In a previous article I wrote about MOOCs, or massive on-line organized learning communities. These are part of a series of articles focused on learning.

When we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 our aim was to "collect and organize all we could find related to volunteer-based non-school tutoring/mentoring" and how such programs could contribute to workforce development and social justice. This chart illustrates the range of ideas we've been collecting and adding to web libraries. This link points to one of four sections in our library.

While universities, libraries, think tanks and many other organizations collect and organize information, the Tutor/Mentor Connection also seeks to actively share this information with anyone who cares about poverty, racism, education, wealth gaps, social justice, democracy, etc. The goal is that as more people become personally involved and understand the infrastructure needed to operate and sustain long-term connections between programs, volunteers and inner city youth, more people will be proactive in seeking out places to offer time, talent and dollars.

This video illustrates the year-round strategy we've developed and this chart outlines the public awareness strategy we've been trying to implement.

Unfortunately we've never had much money to invest in what we do. Yet our network keeps growing each day. These are some awards that have recognized my work. Imagine what we might do to bring thousands of people to this knowledge in an on-going MOOC focused on helping tutor/mentor programs grow --- if we had a greater wealth of resources.

This is Ryan Field at Northwestern University. It's one of thousands of buildings at universities, hospitals, sports stadiums with the name of a benefactor or sponsor who has put up millions of dollars for that privilege.

While I enjoy football and baseball I think we'd all benefit from working together to help more kids born in poverty be in jobs and able to support their kids when they are adults rather than in prison or living in high-poverty neighborhoods.

Thus, I offer the Tutor/Mentor Institute, Tutor/Mentor Connection, or a component of our work, such as the conferences or the tutor/mentor program locator, as a "naming opportunity" for someone who wants to help us make this a better world for all of us.

If you search for the words "tutor mentor" on Google or most other search engines our sites come up multiple times on the first page. You'd need to spend quite a bit of money for that ranking. We already have it. You can too.

Contact me on Skype at "dbassill" or join the Tutor/Mentor Institute on Facebook.

Like to change the subject?

2011-08-24T13:49:00.003-04:00

Instead of talking about losing a big game or becoming manager of another team, wouldn't it be great to be able to point reporters to how you're helping inner-city tutor/mentor programs grow?

Read the Sports articles on this blog, like this one, and see how athletes can become the cheerleaders who mobilize fans to be volunteers, donors and/or leaders in tutor/mentor programs all over the Chicago region and in their own home towns.

Anyone can be a leader and point volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods of a city .... as long as someone makes the effort to create and maintain a Tutor/Mentor Program Locator Directory like we have done since 1994.

The most important part of this idea is that we're pointing to all of the non-school volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs we know of, not just the high profile programs with brand names or celebrity leaders. We're using maps to illustrate this need for tutor/mentor programs in all high-poverty areas.

We need your help to continue to operate the program locator and to update it with new features and more current information. This is a social investment, not a charitable donation. If you want "naming rights" we'd be happy to talk with you.

Chicago Update - 100 Days

2011-08-22T12:03:00.006-04:00

Last week the Chicago Tribune included an article about Mayor Rahm Emanuel's first 100 days.

Today's Chicago SunTimes has a 100 day report on the Chicago Police Department since Supt. Garry McCarthy took command.

In June I posted this article using a graphic I created to illustrate how the Chicago plan might be improved by using maps and graphics.

This this short PDF articlePDF expands upon this idea. Browse the various past article on this blog and you'll see many more visualizations and examples of how maps could be used.

I'm in the middle of my own FIRST 100 DAYS. I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in mid July to provide a new structure to generate ideas like these and to mentor leaders into strategies that might support the growth of mentor-rich non-school k-16 programs in all of the high poverty areas of Chicago or similar cities.

My goal is to "Embed" myself and the ideas on the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site and this blog in the planning and strategy-making of many cities and organizations while providing direct support to the Tutor/Mentor Connection and its efforts to support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.

If you can introduce me to others who might want to incorporate these ideas in their own strategies, or help me develop the mapping and visualization tools we show on the sites, please do. If you want to connect with these ideas join the Tutor/Mentor Forum or just post an introduction here.

CeaseFire comments on UK rioting

2011-08-19T11:29:00.005-04:00

Gary Slutkin who is founder of CeaseFire and based at UIC wrote this article for the Guardian, a UK newspaper: "Rioting is a disease spread from person to person – the key is to stop the infection"

I had posted this map showing London riots on my mapping blog a few days ago.

In 2007 I led off a blog article with this quote:

"Good education predicts good health, and disparities in health and in educational achievement are closely linked," writes Nicholas Freudenberg and Jessica Ruglis, in an article posted at http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2007/oct/07_0063.htm

I've created concept maps to show strategy and to show the long-term work needed to help youth born in poverty move through school and into jobs that enable them to live adult lives free of poverty.

I've hosted conference in Chicago every six months since 1994 and I've invited the Mayor, CPS leaders, CeaseFire and other leaders in Chicago to attend and to use the T/MC resources in their community organizing. I've also invited these leaders to help me find the financial supported needed to keep these resources FREE to Chicago.

In this difficult economic environment collective action intended to generate resources for all of those needed in this work just is not happening.

The next conference will be on November 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building. I hope those who want to focus on prevention efforts will participate.

If you'd like to provide the financial support needed,use the PayPal on this page.

Volunteer Recruitment - Helping Others

2011-08-18T17:05:00.006-04:00

In 1995 the Tutor/Mentor Connection began to organize an annual Chicagowide Volunteer Recruitment Campaign intending to help all programs in the city and listed in the Tutor/Mentor Directory get volunteers and donors. This photo shows how the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program of Metropolitan Chicago was part of that effort.

Between 1998 and 2002 we received a $26,000 per year grant that enabled us to hire a part time Recruitment Campaign Coordinator. Through his effort the campaign grew to include Mrs. George Ryan as honorary chair, and leaders like Paul Vallas, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as speaker at campaign press conferences.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This link shows the Campaign Manifesto from one of those years.

We don't do a printed Directory any longer but have created a map-based Program Locator that can be searched by type of program, age group served and zip code.

We've tried to enlist financial support from foundations, businesses, the Mayor and other leaders for this strategy but with inconsistent success. Even when we've found a major donor the terrible economy of the past decade has caused many to cease giving after one, two or a few years.

Yet the violence has not gone away, schools are still not able to change the aspirations and motivations of too many kids who come to school unprepared to learn and there are too few well-organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in most Chicago or suburban neighborhoods.

Too few leaders have this strategy in mind when they talk of improving schools and improving the workforce.

Due to a lack of funding the Tutor/Mentor Connection no longer exists as a non profit structure. I've created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to continue to support the T/MC services in Chicago. My hope is that big and small investors will see what we're trying to do and see how this strategy can also apply to other cities and will support us with time, talent and dollars.

Yet, while we seek support, all tutor/mentor programs throughout the region are now searching for volunteers and donors to support their efforts, too. While each program has limited funds for advertising, business, media, sports celebrities and elected leaders can adopt these leadership ideas and help create the advertising needed to attract and motivate volunteers and donors to browse the Program Locator and get to know the various tutoring and/or mentoring programs operating in the region.

They are all different. Some are better than others. They call can grow from good to great if enough people make the commitment to help them.

Help Ignite Social Impact

2011-08-17T15:39:00.009-04:00

Today there's a report of a pregnant teen being shot and killed in Chicago. Does that make you mad? This picture is the front page of the Chicago SunTimes from October 1992. I've used it often to remind me and others of why the Tutor/Mentor Institute and Tutor/Mentor Connection exists.

In July 2011 I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. It's not a non profit. It is aimed at making a difference in the world. It needs your help.

Social Investing is a new concept. Here are some excerpts from two sites which are trying to raise money to support social innovators all over the world.

33 Needs.com. FAQ page
"I'm confused. Why do you call this an investment? Because it's important to distinguish this from charity. This is impact investing. Investors are being asked, and offered, the chance to make a personal and emotional connection -- an investment -- with a company. A social entrepreneur is being asked to make a reciprocal promise to its investors -- that it will use the investment to create greater value. It's an ongoing relationship, they're in this deal together."

Start Some Good FAQ page
"Q: Is my financial support tax deductible? A: Unless otherwise stated, your support is not tax deductible. However you will get some awesome rewards, and the even more awesome feeling of helping someone start good!"

Here are two other sites where donors are contributing to organizations and/or causes that do not have non-profit status.

GiveForward - "empowers friends and family to send love and financial support to patients as they navigate a medical crisis"
Social Actions - donate page

At some point I may describe the different projects of the Tutor/Mentor Institute and Tutor/Mentor Connection on one of these portals. But for now I've created this page and I invite you to invest in the vision I've outlined in these blog articles and my newsletters for the past 18 years.

If you've contributed to the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the past I hope you'll continue to invest in the Tutor/Mentor Institute so I can continue to support the T/MC in Chicago. But I hope you'll also invest so I can help similar structures grow in other cities.

We need volunteers to help in many areas, or the money to hire staff. The talent map below illustrates the range of skills needed to implement the vision I've outlined on our web sites. With your help we can fill this map with names of people, organizations and businesses who share ownership of this vision and work responsibly and creatively to achieve its goals.

See actual map.

Help Build Understanding of Tutor/Mentor Programs in Chicago Area

2011-08-13T13:01:00.004-04:00

Since 1993 I've been trying to build a master DIRECTORY of all of the non-school volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. I've been plotting this information on maps, and have created an Interactive Map-Based Program Locator that anyone can use to see the distribution of existing programs and to find contact information for specific programs.

This information needs to be updated each year and we need to build a much deeper understanding of what each program does and the differences between different programs. With this we also need to create communications and public education programs that draw volunteers, donors and other types of support directly to each program the way corporate advertising draws customers to retail stores every day.

I've never had the money to do this. Instead, my goal is to create shared ownership and a network of volunteers and partners who each have knowledge of the entire system, but expertise in local areas.

For the past two years a class at DePaul University has divided the city into sections and worked to build and share an understanding of what tutor/mentor programs are in different sections and where they are most needed.

In our Tutor/Mentor Connection forum we've created a list of "things to look for" when visiting, or building, a tutor/mentor program web site. In you can read how interns working with us are trying to communicate what they are learning about the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Building this type of knowledge and understanding could be the role of a service-learning team in a high school or college. It could be the volunteer project of a corporate or faith based team. It could be the role of a local intermediary organization.

If you want to take this role I can add you to one of our network maps, showing who is taking ownership of the DIRECTORY in different parts of the Chicago region. If we can build ownership in different sections the quality of information will be greater and it will be used by more people to help make tutor/mentor programs available to youth in different sections of the Chicago region.

No one can do all of this on their own. Yet the value of what a few of us create can benefit everyone in the entire Chicago region.

Using Emergence to Innovate Solutions

2011-08-08T11:57:00.003-04:00

My network-building takes me into many forums. I participate in forums like this on the Linked-In Stanford Social Innovation group

As a result I expand my network and my understanding of what I'm doing, by hearing it described in new ways by new people I'm introduced to.

Today a post on this forum included this message: "The theory of change: personally I like the Margaret Wheatley theory of emergence that we find in Daniel approach (even if he don't know it. The writer pointed to this PDF by The Berkana Institute, titled Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale.

As the writer said, I did not know of this. I do now. As you read this take a look at the Tutor/Mentor Institute's "Four_Part Strategy" and see how much what I have been building since the mid 1970s fits with this idea.

This is not acceptable.

2011-08-08T10:18:00.005-04:00

Today's bad news headline is " 6-year old girl shot to death.". I did a Google search to see what articles I could find about the "cycle of poverty and violence" to add to my own library of information on this topic.

I found this video. It could be Chicago. It's Hartford, Connecticut.

"How can people not care." What must we do to engage more people in ways that they become personally involved, and stay involved with time, talent and dollars for many years and in many cities?

Welcome to Monday. This is how I start my Tutor/Mentor Institute week. Hope you'll join me in looking for answers.

Civic Engagement - a focus on learning

2011-08-05T12:18:00.003-04:00

This week I received a White Paper titled Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication

I was surprised when on page 18 I saw Cabrini Connections listed as a model. I was pleased because this on-going learning has been part of the elearning and technology strategy that I had championed in this organization for many years. This is pretty much on hold right now due to loss of our major donor due to economic reasons.

However, the reason I'm really excited to be in this White Paper was its emphasis on creating community information and stimulating on-going learning as a result of volunteering and service involvement. One group that was profiled in this White Paper was the Bonner Foundation, which "promotes the use of social media tools, such as wikis and videos, by all of its scholars.

I started putting my planning documents on wikis and on web site presentations more than a dozen years ago. However, the challenge I've found is helping people find the time and motivation to read these and become personally involved by editing and contributing ideas.

I was invited to be a contributor on the ACT NOW Drop Out Prevention wiki many years ago. I wonder how many other people use this?

I'm also part of many on-line forums where ideas are shared and networks built.

One of the five strategies of the White Paper is to "Generate Public Relational Knowledge." I've been piloting ways of doing this with maps, graphics, and network analysis tools, yet have never found enough people who really understood the value of this who were willing to invest the resources needed to build this.

In the White Paper Carmen Siranni's book, "Investing in Democracy" is quoted saying "you cannot get community summits and other forms of excellent engagement on the cheap. They take a long-term effort and resources that are normally a mixture of money, policies, and people's volunteered and paid time."

Amen.

I've created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to expand the ways I attract revenue and build partnerships so that I can do more to continue to develop the tools and resources we've been working on for more than a decade and make them available to more cities than just Chicago.

This talent map shows the skills I need and some of the people I'm learning from. If you want to be part of this map and an investor/sponsor of this process, please introduce yourself here or on the Tutor/Mentor Forum.

Looking for tutor/mentor volunteers?

2011-08-02T17:07:00.006-04:00

School starts in a few weeks and every volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago, New York, Dallas, LA, etc. is ramping up efforts to recruit volunteers and other support needed to operate.

However, very few of the mentoring programs in America have the power and influence of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, who can run professionally made radio ads and recruit volunteers for their programs. Most of the small programs don't have the resources to do this.

So what do we do. I presented the information in this PDF to an advertising class at Loyola University Chicago in April and at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in May. It shows how each of us has personal power that we can unleash through social media and one-on-one network-building.

What if volunteers, staff, students and leaders in neighborhoods across the country mounted a social media campaign aimed at enlisting 1% of the richest people in America to become deeply involved in helping tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty neighborhoods.

This Chicago Tribune report, shows the "wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels since the U.S began tracking more than 25 years ago."

This link points to charts that demonstrate the growing gap between rich and poor.

What would it take to recruit volunteers from affluent backgrounds and keep them involved for dozens of years so some become as committed to this cause as I have become in my own 35 years of involvement?

The graphic at the top of this page illustrates the role thousands of people could take to expand the number of people who become involved in tutor/mentor programs.

This graphic is from this video. It shows how people who stay involved longer become more personally engaged, and do more to help a youth succeed in life. Some of these people could do much more to make tutor/mentor programs available if they were from the 1% of the wealthiest people in the country.

Read more of the ideas we share via this blog. Help us share these with an ever-expanding network of people. Take ownership of these in your own community, company, faith groups and social network.

Together we can connect those who can help with those who need help and through this we can build bridges from poverty for those who are now isolated on islands of inner city poverty.

Networked Learning via MOOC

2011-07-31T19:13:00.005-04:00

Vance Stephens who is one of the creators of the Webheads network is one of the people who constantly inspires me with his thinking and writing. Today I read this article and this article.

The first article introduced me to the concept of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)

It pointed me to this blog where a short video video gives a quick over view of what MOOC is.

Follow the other articles in this blog from one written May 28, 2011 to the most recent and you can see how a MOOC has been developing around an "e portfolio" course. You may be interested in the topic, or like me, you may be interested in the networked learning process.

The second article makes the connection between Josh Grobin, volunteerism, mentoring, and the innovative thinking of Sir. Ken Robinson, which you can see in the video below.

In sharing these links I'm trying to inspire people in Chicago and throughout the world to see that volunteer-based non-school tutor/mentor programs reaching youth in inner-city neighborhoods could provide the type of learning sparks and opportunities Robinson envisions, even when they are not provided by the local public or private school.

Since I can only reach a few people with my own articles, and there is so much information to learn if we want high-quality tutor/mentor programs to be available in most of the high poverty neighborhoods of big cities like Chicago, the ideas of a MOOC really appeals to me. It's a way to organize the information I've collected in the Tutor/Mentor Institute and share it with thousands of other learners, collaborators and experts who have their own ideas to contribute to this process.

Learn more about MOOCs. Learn more about what motivates volunteers to give more time and talent to a cause than paid workers often do on a job. Think about how these ideas intersect in a long-term process of learning, innovating and actions.

UPDATE: 8/22/2011 - This slide share by Vance Stevens provide a great deal of additional information about MOOCs and self-directed learning.

- http://www.slideshare.net/vances/meportfoliosputting-the-me-in-melearning

Imagine a MOOC timed to coincide with the November 2011 and May 2012 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, or with the National Mentoring Month event in January.

Network Building - Who Is Helping?

2011-07-30T12:12:00.007-04:00

This was the front cover of the Chicago SunTimes in October 1992 when I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The editorial writer says ending this violence is "everyone's responsibility". For 18 years I've been reaching out to build a team out of "everyone" who would work collectively to make more and better non-school, volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring and learning centers available in all high poverty areas.

Due to recent changes I am creating a new organizational structure to continue this mission. It's called Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and is based on the ideas I've been sharing on this site and this blog for over a dozen years.

This is not a non-profit structure so the challenges I face in building a team of people to help me are different than when the Tutor/Mentor Connection has a non-profit status with the Cabrini Connections program. I intend to build a new leadership team and re-establish the T/MC as a Chicago non profit, but that will take up to a year. By creating the Tutor/Mentor Institute I can continue to support the T/MC web sites and can offer my expertise to help similar networks grow in other cities.

So "who is helping?" That's a question people have asked me for many years. I'm connected to so many people, and the way people help is often in short term bursts, that it's always been difficult to describe the range of help offered. So I've created visualizations to demonstrate this and I continue to look for volunteers who can convert these into interactive Social Network Analysis maps.

This graphic shows the range of talent needed in the Tutor/Mentor Institute and in almost any innovative social enterprise. You can see the live version here.

If you click on the nodes at the bottom of the different units on this map it will take you to groups on the T/MC Ning site where you can see people who are "members" of that group. You can also see links to Twitter, Facebook and Linked-in pages that point to groups of people, or individuals who are working more closely with me. Ultimately a visitor should be able to click on any of these boxes and find names, profiles, discussion groups filled with people who are working in various ways to help the Tutor/Mentor Institute achieve its mission. Right now few of the boxes are filled and updating this map is a time-consuming process.

While my maps are built using power point and a free c-map application, this video shows how networks can be visualized using emerging free applications. I'm trying to apply this technology to show the growth of the T/MC and the different constellations and networks of people within the network. I just need to find the talent, time and/or investment to build this.

Introducing Gephi 0.7 from gephi on Vimeo.

However, if you are already working with the T/MC or want to help me help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach more inner-city youth in Chicago and other cities, you can show your involvement just by joining one of the Ning groups. As you take an active role, it will be demonstrated by the work you do in each group. For those who want to go to another level, you can even join the OHATS group on Ning and become a recorder to document your actions.

"Rome was not built in a day" is a saying that implies the long term effort to build anything that is great and stands the test of time. This map will not fill in in a few months and might take years. However, as it does fill in with partners, volunteers, investors and leaders who share the same vision what we do to change the path from birth to career for youth living in poverty will dramatically change.

Indianapolis Mentoring Summit - Aug. 11

2011-07-29T13:27:00.002-04:00

This page shows how the Mentoring Summit in Indianapolis is borrowing from ideas of the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago.

Join the Tutor/Mentor Conference planning and follow up group on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

I'm trying to organize a November Conference in Chicago, but need to find at least $10k in sponsor dollars and/or donated space. We'll offer this under the Tutor/Mentor Institute LLC structure which I've created in July to support the continued growth and operations of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago.

Contact me on Skype, Linked In, Twitter or Facebook, to offer your ideas and support. Sign up for the Indianapolis Summit via their web site.

Embracing visualization

2011-07-27T12:00:00.003-04:00

This video is a demonstration of Gephi 0.7 which is an open source network analysis tool. If you read some of the network building articles I've written, perhaps you can envision how the different groups I've connected with over the past 20 years could seem like constellations and could be visualized using a tool like Gephi 0.7.

Introducing Gephi 0.7 from gephi on Vimeo.

My goal is to demonstrate that network building has a value, and must be supported consistently over many years if the size, composition and impact of the network is to have meaning. If we can demonstrate this then we can also teach network-building practices at universities and high schools and coach it in businesses and civic organizations.

Growth of the Network

2011-07-22T12:39:00.008-04:00

This graphic illustrates the growth of my network since October 1992. At that time there just seven volunteers created Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection. However, as this timeline shows, I had been building a network since 1973.

What I've not been able to do is show the growth of this network, nor show what people and organizations have helped in the past, or are helping now. This article is a list of people and organizations who help in the 1990s.

Now I'm preparing to launch the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, using the ideas we've been sharing on this site for over 12 years. Through the Tutor/Mentor Institute I'll continue to fund the web sites that support the Tutor/Mentor Connection and I'll continue to host conferences, one-on-one consultations, and on-line meetings and forums. My goal is to attract revenue from more than philanthropy so that the tools and services we build can have greater impact on the growth of tutor/mentor programs than we have been able to provide in the past due to lack of revenue and leadership support.

While many people have offered encouragement and some are more involved in helping me with this transition, I don't have a good way to visualize this, or to connect the people who are helping to each other.

I've been using concept maps to illustrate the range of people and organizations who need to take ownership of the ideas I've been sharing and how I've created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to support the growth of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago as well as similar groups in other cities.

This map is my first effort at showing the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Institute.

Today I'm working with a new concept map that illustrates the range of talents I need, and points to groups where I'm connected to people with that talent, as well as to some people who have stepped forward a bit to help me recently.

If you've been helping me already your name may show up in one of the nodes on this chart. If it's not there and you want to add it, just join one of the groups on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum and take an active role, or join the Tutor/Mentor Institute Facebook group.

There is much to do and too many holes not yet filled on the talent chart. If you share the vision and want to take some ownership, please connect with me.

Obama Urges Business Support for Education

2011-07-20T11:25:00.002-04:00

July 18th article in Washington Post talks about an "unuhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifsual education roundtable" hosted by President Obama. It's considered unusual because business leaders and not educators are the main attendees.

I posted this comment:

It would be great if these leaders were using their visibility, communications and influence to do on-going advertising that draws employees and customers to schools and non-school youth tutoring/mentoring programs in high poverty neighborhoods and if teams of employees were volunteering time to help high-quality tutor/mentor programs grow and operate in the same manner that corporate offices help hundreds or thousands of branch locations operate throughout the counhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftry.

Such a strategy needs to go beyond supporting the brand name and well known organizations that only serve a small fraction of the kids in neighborhoods with poverty and poor schools. Cities need to create on-line program locator/map-based directories such as the one we host in Chicago. See http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net . With platforms like this volunteers can choose from programs in many neighborhoods. They can helphttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif small and under funded programs constantly improve, while helping well funded programs draw from ideas of local, national and international programs to also constantly innovate new ways to keep youth and volunteers connected.

Several cities do have program locators, but don't use these as platforms to attract volunteers and donors directly to the programs they list. It's hard to know if they use them to assess the distribution and availability of needed programs in areas with highest concentration of need based on poverty and locations of poorly performing schools, or high drop out rate schools.

The service we host in Chicago is a pilot and has room for much improvement. Yet, I've found few map-based marketing strategies used by business to encourage volunteer involvement in programs designed to provide long-term mentoring, tutoring and career-education resources.

President Obama was a speaker at a conference we hosted in 1999. Arne Duncan attended our first conferences in 1994. I hope they'll come back and take another look and apply some of these ideas in their efforts to expand the networks of support for kids living in high concentrations of poverty. and use them to attract volunteers and donors directly to

Life is a Jouney. Detours happen.

2011-07-15T16:55:00.002-04:00

Today is my last day on the payroll of Cabrini Connections, the Chicago tutor/mentor program that I and six other volunteers created in the fall of 1992. I've been the president CEO for the past 18 years.

While we operate a single tutor/mentor program serving a small group of youth, my 35 years leading a tutor/mentor program, and my advertising background with the Montgomery Ward Corporation, led me to create the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 at the same time as we were creating Cabrini Connections.

Our goal was to build a system of supports that would help more children in Chicago be able to participate in high quality tutor/mentor programs by increasing the way those programs are supported by volunteers, donors, media, etc.

The video below illustrates some of the ideas I've developed over the past two decades.

Unfortunately we've not been able to attract the high profile leadership, celebrity or political support that is essential to raising the philanthropic capital needed to do what we're trying to do. In the end, the struggle to find money to operate the Cabrini Connections part caused the volunteer Board of Directors to decide they can no longer support the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Thus, I'm leaving the organization I started and have led for so many years and re-launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Initially I'm creating Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, which will enable me to move forward in organizing a November Conference, and see financial support from investors and others who believe in what we're trying to do.

I'll be working from my basement in Park Ridge and from donated space at HIGHSIGHT, located at 315 W. Walton in Chicago, which is one of the many Chicago tutor/mentor programs I've been connected to for more than 15 years.

The change from being part of Cabrini Connections to being a separate entity has happened quite quickly so many of the important details -- like how to generate income to support what we do and pay me and others to provide our time and talent -- have not been worked out.

Yet, in February 1990 when I left my job at Montgomery Ward, I did not know where the money was going to come from, yet I was committed to continuing my leadership of the tutoring program at Wards which I had led as a volunteer since 1975.

When I left the my role as Executive Directory and founder of the Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program in October 1992 I did not know where the money and help was going to come from to start Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Yet we've raised more than $6 million and involved more than 580 teens and 800 volunteers in the Cabrini Connections program since 1993. We've created a Tutor/Mentor Connection that connects the web sites and ideas of most of the tutor/mentor programs in Chicago to each other, and connects Chicago programs to the ideas of others around the world.

We still don't have a leadership system in Chicago or any other city that applies the ideas of the Tutor/Mentor Connection or draws consistent financial support to tutor/mentor programs in every neighborhood on a consistent and on-going basis. Thus we have an uneven distribution of programs, uneven quality, and inconsistent growth caused by constant changes of personnel.

So by leaving the CEO role at Cabrini Connections I will have much more time to devote to building tools that support collective efforts, collaboration, innovation and the on-going general operations of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and in other big cities of the world.

I hope you'll follow my progress, join the journey, and help put some financial gas in the engine so we can do this better then we've been able to in the past.

Thank you all for your support and thank you to the youth, parents, volunteers and friends of Cabrini Connections who have let me be part of your lives for so many years.

To those who give, much is given in return. I have given over 35 years to Cabrini Green youth and I believe I have been well rewarded through the love and friendship of the people I've met.

RIP Latino Education Alliance

2011-07-12T18:04:00.004-04:00

I received this message in today's email: "Latino Education Alliance (LEA) is closing its doors after 10 years as a nonprofit serving Latino high school students and families in Chicago. The decision to close Latino Education Alliance follows a year-long effort to reduce costs, the exploration of an affiliation with other agencies and conversations with our historic funding partners."

If you've been following my blog you know that Tutor/Mentor Connection also faces an uncertain future. Funding challenges have led the Directors of the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection to decide to no longer support the T/MC strategy. Friday, July 15, 2011 is my last day as President, CEO of the combined organization.

However, it's not yet the final act. I've decided to create Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to continue to innovate new products and services that can help cities support the growth of high quality, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs that reach a growing number of k-12 kids living in high poverty areas.

For me to succeed I need to attract volunteers and leaders with the skills shown in this graphic and/or I need to attract investors and donors who will provide the funds for me to hire people with these skills.

This is not starting over, or even starting new. I'm continuing on the same road, just changing from one mode of transportation to another. For a while that might seem like a move from a used 2005 Ford to a used 1999 Chevy. But as long as I'm able to steer and stay on the road, I think I can find a newer vehicle to carry the T/MC forward in the future.

If you're interested in helping join in at the T/MC forum on Ning or lets connect on Skype. My handle is "dbassill".

Another shooting in Roseland

2011-07-07T09:45:00.004-04:00

Today's Chicago SunTimes includes a half-page story about a nine-year old boy being shot in his back yard.

According to the SunTimes story there have been 114 weapons-related crimes committed in the last year within a half block radius of where this shooting took place.

What is going to change this?

I've written about the violence in Roseland and in Chicago many times in the past six years. The maps I include are from the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which hosts a directory of non-school tutor/mentor programs operating in different parts of the city.

My intention is to follow up "bad news" media with a much more consistent call to action that recruits volunteers, leaders, donors from the suburbs and the city to help a wider range of volunteer-based, k-12, tutor/mentor programs become available in more parts of Roseland and other areas where poverty reduces the range of opportunities and activities available to youth in the area and gives a wide open path for gangs and negative influences to expand.

My stories alone will not raise the type of visibility needed to change the flow of resources and the availability of high-quality non-school learning and mentoring centers. However, anyone can use the Program Locator to create their own map-stories. This guide shows how.

When students and volunteers from high schools, colleges, businesses and faith groups begin to use these maps and create their own stories we will create an orchestra of voices that will have the collective weight of a U2 Concert, and a collective impact on the growth of programs in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities with similar problems.

The Program Locator is available to everyone but it is currently funded by no one. If your company or philanthropy want to help us keep this resource available for Chicago and share it with other cities we need your financial investment. Email Dan Bassill at tutormentor2@earthlink.net if you want to offer your help.

Inviting University Partnerships

2011-07-06T10:31:00.003-04:00

This spring we've hosted interns from the Adler School of Professional Psychology and from Illinois Institute of Technology. You can see examples of the work these interns have done by reading the blog articles on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum. You can see more intern work on this blog.

Joseph Kruel served a five month internship. He's a first year graduate student at the Adler School of Professional Psychology. His goal was to learn about the Tutor/Mentor Connection and communicate that to his network and his university.

In this article Joseph writes "Throughout my internship at T/MC, I have been struggling with the idea of how universities can become actively involved in the nonprofit sector and with tutor/mentor programs, and even provide a source of constant revenue."

He concludes with a "call for partnerships between universities and nonprofits such as T/MC, much in a similar design that the partnerships in the report were designed as."

I've written several articles showing ways universities and their alumni could become strategic leaders of Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies in their own communities.

This PDF is a strategic plan developed by grad students at DePaul, intended to kick-start the planning a university might go through to adopt the T/MC.

With the Tutor/Mentor Connection going through a restructuring now would be a great time for an alumni of one of the hundreds of universities located in urban areas of the US to decide that his $35-$50 million gift ought to go to establishing a Tutor/Mentor Connection Institute on his own campus.

Freedom is not FREE

2011-07-04T11:29:00.006-04:00

Last night I watched a documentary showing how African Americans have fought and died in every major conflict from the mid 1700s through the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They fought for freedom, despite the fact they they enjoyed so little of the rights of freedom in America.

In the past six years I've written about the price of freedom and the sacrifices citizens need to make to have the future we want. You can read all of these under the HERO tag. Here are a few headlines.

Feb. 8, 2006 - "the difficulty of success does not relieve one of the obligation to try"

May 29, 2006 - "Where does the courage come from to fight the un-winnable fight?"

Sept 11, 2006 - "Remembering 9/11 - How much sacrifice is enough?"

Oct 8, 2008 - "What sacrifice will our next President ask from Americans?"

Aug 5, 2009 - "Our promise: Do all we can to assure inner-city youth are in jobs and starting by age 25"

March 4, 2010 - "What Level of Commitment?"

March 14, 2011 - "Hero. George C. Marshall"

All of these articles have a common theme. The freedom and future we all want comes with a huge price. We need to innovate ways to involve more people in the work that needs to be done and the sacrifices that need to be made--not just the men and women in our Armed Forces.

I'm re-starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the next few months. I have no board of directors, no source of funding, a huge mountain of decisions that need to be made. The main T/MC web library is not working. The maps need to be updated with 2010 census info but I've no money, or source of income, to do this. It's a huge challenge.

Yet in the 35 years since I began leading a tutor/mentor program I've touched the lives of thousands of youth and adults in Chicago and around the world. Charles Cameron is one. He's hosting forums on Social Edge to help me rebuild the T/MC.

If I can just find a way to reconnect with the people I've touched or reached out to over all these years I can find the talent, manpower, dollars and other resources needed to not only create a new organizational structure for the T/MC, but to make it much stronger than in the past.

Here's an article I wrote in October 2009 titled "Nobel Prize. Earn it."

We can do this if we can find a way to create this BIG REUNION over the next few months. Email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net if you want to help.

Photos from 1973-2011 Tutor/Mentor Journey

2011-07-02T16:01:00.002-04:00

Here's a slide show with photos of me and people I've met through Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection since 1993.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Changing Education Paradigms

2011-06-30T16:42:00.002-04:00

This RSA Animate titled "Changing Education Paradigms" is challenges our thinking about education. As I look at it I have two thoughts:

1) It will take eons to change the dinosaurs that are the existing public education system, so why not create other ways to reach kids with these ideas in other time frames and in non-school settings?

2) Gosh I wish I could communicate my ideas this well.

Distroying the Network

2011-06-28T12:57:00.004-04:00

I'm going through a really painful process right now. Since 1993 I've been reaching out to build a network connecting all sorts of people who are involved in some way, or should be involved, in helping kids in high poverty neighborhoods have mentor-rich, non-school support systems that well-organized, and well-funded, tutor/mentor programs might provide.

Since the Board of Directors at Cabrini Connections voted in April 2011 to discontinue support for the Tutor/Mentor Connection, effective June 30, I'm not only trying to figure out a new way to generate revenue to keep the T/MC going, I'm moving all of the T/MC history from the 4200 sq ft at our 800 W. Huron Office to much smaller space in my basement, a rented storage locker and donated office space.

I've been keeping files showing every contact I've made over the past 18 years. My goal has been that I would find a researcher/writer who would use these files to show how myself and a few supporters have helped the T/MC network grow from year-to-year. Such information could inspire others who have no particular social standing or wealth to take on a similar role in other cities and other causes.

I have donated network analysis software that could be used to map this network. Here's an article that illustrates how this software can map changes in a network. This article only shows a small group as a result of one event. Imagine mapping the growth of the T/MC network, which formally started in 1992 with seven volunteers and a huge vision.

However, with the impending move, I've had to start going through my files and library to choose between what I keep and put into storage and what I toss into the trash.

I've already gone through the folders that I've aggregated about organizations in Chicago and tossed out about 8 boxes of files that don't directly relate to tutor/mentor programs in the region. Once in the trash I can never re-build that history or show those connections.

Here's an example. I'm looking at a file with correspondence related to arts mentoring and an Art Festival we started at Cabrini Connections in 2000.

One handout shows a program called FluidArts. Board members included Deborah Phelan and Bonnie Bracey. I'm still connected to Bonnie in other email. However the web site on the handouts does not work. This information show a goal of creating a global alliance. It's good stuff. People could still learn from this. Do I toss it?

In another file I have copies of email correspondence from 1998 to 2002

Caroline Kim at i Mentor (June 2001) - she wrote "I've been reading the messages you posted on various listserves, and I'm always impressed by your dedication and energy." Caroline and I are now connecting on Twitter and other social media platforms.

Richard Civille, Center for Civic Networking, June 2001 - he wrote about The Creating Community Connections (C3) System saying "can you imagine how C3 can be further designed for community networks, community technology centers and other community based organizations to help them achieve their mission?"

Robert Goetch, June 2001 - Robert was leading Students in Business, Inc at that time. he wrote "I am impressed with your web site. It seems to be a great resource for those implementing mentor projects." Robert and I are now connected in a LinkedIn group under his current Be A Mentor organization.

Kevin McCann, Office of Educational Innovation and Evaluation, Kansas State University, June 2001. Kevin wrote "Yes, we should share ideas, perhaps we could collaborate."

Cynthia White, Think Detroit.org, June 2001. Steve Roussos, a volunteer working with the T/MC wrote "I want to share some information with you about a project that Dan Bassill (from the Tutor/Mentor Connection) and I have been working on and may also be of interest to you and ThinkDetroit."

These are just the first few pages of a thick folder!

Over the years as I've met people on the Internet or in face-to-face meetings I've added them to our print newsletter mail list and to our email list. Unfortunately, we've not had money to send the print newsletter since 2004 and the growth of spammers has made it much, much, more difficult to build a connection via email.

Yet, if I toss these records in the trash there will be no way in the future for me, or anyone else, to go back to these people to find out if the ideas we share are still being used or if there are now ways and/or reasons for us to be doing more to help each other.

I have nearly 10 file cabinets of contact information, but need to cut this to half that size within two weeks.

If someone has two-three rooms of office space to donate or if someone wants to move these records to a research institution who could partner with T/MC in building and sustaining this network, please call me at 312-492-9614.

If someone wants to become the sponsor or benefactor of the Tutor/Mentor Connection that would be even better. You don't need to be from Chicago because these ideas apply to every major city in the world.

The network I've been building for 30 years can be your network. Or it can go in the trash and be lost to all of us for ever.

Wealth and Income Inequality in America

2011-06-22T17:05:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for this post titled 'The Best Resources About Wealth and Income Inequality in America'.

T/MC Added Value - We Free Up Time

2011-06-21T15:57:00.002-04:00

By leaving the Cabrini Connections program this summer I free up time to innovate new ways to help programs like this grow. I'm reading "A Brief History of the Corporation."

This is one quote from the article: "Ideas fueled by energy can free up time which can then partly be used to create more ideas to free up more time."

This week on the Social Edge Forum, Charles Cameron is leading a discussion about the changes taking place in organizations like Tutor/Mentor Connection. Join in and add your ideas.

Students say "Step up to the Challenge"

2011-06-18T11:51:00.005-04:00

This video PSA was created this spring by teens at the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program in Chicago.

Stepping Up To The Challenge from Cabrini Connections on Vimeo.

Students have been creating videos at Cabrini Connections since 1995.

This could be happening in volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs throughout Chicago and other cities. Maybe alumni will become film makers like Leo Hall, who produced Count It all Joy, a movie that has won two awards from Christian Film Festivals this year. Leo was my first student in 1973-74.

Or maybe they will become actors like Tramaine Montell Ford, who was one of the first video group members in 1995.

This won't happen unless a greater number of benefactors step forward as producers to provide the funds that programs like Cabrini Connections need to keep students and volunteers connected and involved in these types of experiences.

It also won't happen unless sponsors support events like the Tutor/Mentor Conference where we can bring programs together to share ideas like these while also creating a spotlight that draws benefactors to multiple locations, not just a few visible ones.