It's Super Bowl Week. What's the Game Plan?

It's Super Bowl Week. While a large part of world attention will focus on the game, the commercials and the halftime show, I've posted articles here almost every year since 2007 that show a role athletes can take beyond the charity causes they already support.

In 2024 I used this image from the NFL Awards show in this article, with a headline of "Multiplying Good - Map the Network".  The goal of the article was to encourage one or more data researchers to create a library of EVERY pro sports athlete, and the causes they support.  Make it searchable by city, by sport, by cause, by team, etc.  Use visualizations like Kumu.io and Gephi to help people use this information.

 

In March 2025 I included the graphic below in this article, showing an example of how networks can be mapped.

In this section and this section you can find many more articles about mapping networks using tools like Kumu.io and NodeXL. Find more ideas in this section.

In January 2026 I wrote an article titled "Making Philanthropy Work Better" and introduced Project 990, which is mining data of all nonprofit 990s reports and mapping the information. 

Since the 1990s I've been trying to influence what visible people do to support youth and youth serving programs in all high poverty areas of the cities where they play sports, or where they grew up.  

In the mid 1990s the Tutor/Mentor Connection created the map below, showing high poverty areas of Chicago and locations of non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.  It was signed by 11 pro athletes during a weekend golf event, to indicate their support of the idea of athletes "adopting neighborhoods", not just single programs.  I've share this often, such as in this 2024 article. 

If you search "Super Bowl" on this blog you'll find many articles where I've shared ideas similar to these.  In 2007 I wrote "Go Bears! The Super Bowl of Life". In that I wrote:

While many athletes have foundations and do great things to help their communities, there's no strategy that I know of that enlists athletes and coaches in an effort to use their celebrity visibility to draw attention to a social cause, and to draw volunteers and donors to specific neighborhoods throughout a city.

For instance, on the Super Bowl broadcast Terry Bradshaw, a former star quarterback, and current TV broadcaster, made an appeal for viewers to stay involved in helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The TV footage focused at New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, but I heard him end a phrase with "and the other areas".

If someone created a map of the area that had been destroyed by the Hurricane, it would be possible to enlist athletes from many sports to adopt different communities, or zip codes, in the entire area. Then, whenever that athlete were to have a TV opportunity, he/she could draw attention to his zip code, as part of an effort to keep attention on the entire area of destruction. As the season moves from Basketball to baseball to football and back to hockey and basketball, different stars, in different cities, would have many opportunities to focus attention, and draw resources to the various parts of the entire geographic area where volunteers, donors, and all sorts of help will be needed for many years.

In the same way, I want to enlist athletes to focus attention on the high poverty neighborhoods of big cities. Instead of just talking about the Boys and Girls Clubs, or Big Brothers, Big Sisters, or other highly visible charities, we need to focus attention regularly on every neighborhood where kids need help, and the organizations in those neighborhoods who are providing help. 

This is a strategy I hope athletes will adopt. If you read this, and you know a Bear, or a Bull, or a college coach, or even a high school coach, who might want to be a champion of this idea, please pass this on.

While I've shared these ideas for many years I still have not found any photos of a pro football or basketball player standing in front of a map like I do in this 1990s photo, urging people to support youth programs in EVERY high poverty neighborhood, not just the few high profile programs in a few places.

I still have found no athlete or team supporting the "Adopt a Neighborhood" strategy that I outlined.

So as you watch this year's game, I hope you'll share this idea with high school and college coaches, and with any athlete you know.  Think of these articles as a "playbook" that coaches and players can study to see how they can do better next year than they did this year.

That's a habit that could make a quantum difference in the lives of millions of people.

The best time to have started this was 30 years ago. The next best is now, in 2026 when the technology available to build big databases and visualize the information is now available.

Thanks for reading.  Enjoy the game!

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter and Mastodon (see links here).

And, if you value what I'm sharing, please visit this page and help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. 

Expanding "Who you Know" Networks

National Mentoring Month has just ended and Black History Month starts today.  Last week I watched a panel discussion, hosted by MENTOR Georgia (it's 90 minutes long, so watch it later).  In one segment the speaker talked about mentoring as a strategy to expand networks, or social capital. 

That takes time.  

Below is a graphic that I created several years ago.  I find very few mentoring discussions that use graphics to emphasize the long-term support kids in high poverty, highly segregated, areas need to move from first grade through high school and post high school and into jobs and careers.

If you work your way through it I hope you'll have a better idea, and commitment, to the work that needs to be done in many places.

At the top of the graphic I show an arrow that represents support all kids need, for the first 20-25 years of their lives, to help them through school and then, into and through their adult lives. Some kids, like Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk, had much greater support propelling them to career success. Those are extreme examples, but most kids have a large natural network of support than kids in high poverty areas. 

That arrow comes from this "mentoring kids to careers" graphic, which I created in the late 1990s.  It shows first grade through 12th grade, then college or vocational training, as a series of steps. At each step kids need a variety of different supports and/or are influenced by people who work in occupations that youth might aspire to in their own futures.  If you open this concept map, you'll see a different version of this timeline.

As I said above, all kids need some of these supports and influences.  However, if you read many of the articles in this section of my library, you'll see plenty of evidence showing that kids living in high poverty areas don't have as many naturally occurring supports or career models as do kids in more affluent areas. That means someone, or many people, need to help make these supports available and keep them in place for 12 or more years.

This leads to the next element on the graphic, which are the maps.  

I've been using maps since 1993 to visually show areas of Chicago with high concentrations of poverty and many indicators showing kids and families need more help.  Without a map you could have a long list of places you're helping, but still be missing a large number of other places that need the same help.

You can find the maps shown above in this 2016 article. You can find hundreds of articles on this blog, and the MappingforJustice blog, showing similar maps and encouraging leaders to use them to guide resources into all of these areas for many years. 

The map graphic I've used is a mashup of maps from three sources.  In this concept map you can find many data platforms that could be used to create similar map stories. 

Why don't we see leaders using maps to show the growth of youth and family support programs in every high poverty area of the  USA?

Since starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011, my focus has been on helping long-term, volunteer-based tutor and/or mentor programs grow in all high poverty areas as a way of expanding the networks of support available to kids, helping them through school and beyond. 

Thus, the arrow, or timeline, indicates multiple years of support. The map illustrates that many places need the same type of support for many years.

The graphic below visualizes the need for every industry to have strategies that distribute volunteers, technology, dollars and more into every neighborhood...and for school and non-school programs to be places where kids connect with a wider range of learning and career opportunities than might be normally available in their own family and neighborhood. 

While I led a tutor/mentor program from 1975 through 2011, which collected inner city kids to a wide range of workplace adults, I did not start to understand this as a form of bridging social capital until the early 2000s.  

Here's a link to one of the earliest articles that have influenced my thinking about social capital. One introductory paragraph says:

“Social networks that can bridge across geography, race and class are key to success in the new economy”, says Professor Manuel Pastor, Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied social networks in Los Angeles among Latinos. ‘Hard’ skills are essential, but it’s the connections and mentoring that provide information about what skills are necessary and a vision of how acquiring them can lead to new opportunities for all our residents”.

This was written by Bob Pearlman.  The research he points to can be found at this link.  His current website is at this link. 

Since then I've aggregated links to many articles about social capital, which you can find here, and have posted 30+ articles on this blog that focus on social capital.

In this article I point to an earlier influence. It was a book that I read in the mid 1990s, titled American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, by Douglas Massey. This book emphasized how disconnected people living in highly segregated, high poverty, neighborhoods were from the resources that might make lives in those communities better for residents.

MENTOR, the national intermediary, focuses on all types of mentoring, recognizing that every person could benefit from having a mentor at some points in their lives.  But that dilutes the focus needed to reach kids in every high poverty area with organized, on-going programs.

I've used maps showing high poverty areas to help people understand where long-term, organized, volunteer based tutor,  mentor and learning programs are most needed. I encourage MENTOR and others to do the same.

Why non-school programs?

Find the graphic below in this visual essay.  It shows how organized, on-going programs are needed in high poverty areas of big cities, because of how difficult it is for kids and schools in these areas to make such connections and sustain them for many years.  We operated after 5pm because that was when workplace volunteers were more likely to make long-term commitments.

I've used a variety of graphics to visualize how organized programs can create extra learning opportunities by the involvement of volunteers who work in different industries and career fields.  This Total Quality Mentoring visual essay illustrates how such programs could be more available if they were strategically supported by leaders from different sectors.

I created this presentation more than 20 years ago to show why organized tutor/mentor programs are needed in high poverty areas and actions the Tutor/Mentor Connection had piloted since 1993 to help such programs get the attention and resources each needs to constantly improve.   The graphic I've included below visualizes some of the different types of learning, mentoring and tutoring that might take places in a site-based program.

These strategies have been based on the premise that areas of concentrated, high poverty, have too few people working in the wide range of careers that are modeled daily by parents, family and neighbors in more affluent places.  Thus, such programs need to be built in order to expand the social capital for kids in poverty areas.

However....  that does not mean there are "no people" living in high poverty areas who have jobs and careers.   That's the final element included in the graphic above.  Kids and adults need to learn "who you already know" who might be someone who can mentor them and help open doors to opportunity.

The need for social capital literacy is not really a new concept. Bob Pearlman's early 2000s article said, "Networking, or acquiring a social network, is a key skill of the 21st Century. It’s how you learn, and how you connect."  

I show another version of the "hub and spoke" graphics in a presentation titled "virtual corporate office" and in these blog articles.  

This shows how different industries could "distribute" learning and mentoring opportunities to kids in all high poverty areas, via school and non-school programs.  Social capital literacy could be a separate box, or could be a part of the mentoring coming from each industry.

The map reinforces the need for these forms of learning and mentoring in EVERY high poverty neighborhood. The timeline emphasizes the need for such learning to be consistently available for many years.  The other graphics emphasize that businesses in every sector could be supporting organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in multiple locations, not just one or two favored programs. 

Let's look at the timeline arrow once more.  If you click and enlarge it you'll see different types of learning activities that are appropriate for different age levels.

Here's another quote from Bob Pearlman's article:

"But the most significant finding in the study was that a student's social network can have a significant impact on his/her career choice. Students whose parents are both in high-tech careers are more likely to be interested in technology careers themselves. In addition, 83 percent of students rely on personal connections for career-related information and guidance."

I believe that the earlier a young person becomes involved in a well-organized, mentor-rich non-school program, the more benefit that program will have. Stronger bonds will be built with mentors, and with the program itself.  That's important because while a volunteer might leave after a year or longer, the program's ability to provide continuity, and a replacement mentor, helps keep the youth involved.  As a youth moves from middle school to high school the support offered can lead to part time jobs, internships, college access, scholarships and ultimately job and career opportunities. 

Kids in primary school where fundamental learning habits can be reinforced, and career aspirations nurtured, don't yet have the level of maturity needed to actively seek out mentors.  However, by middle school, and early high school, I think most kids would be ready to take more control over their own futures, if there were people helping them.  

We need to make that happen. 

This  has been a long post. Thanks for reading. I hope we connect on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn.

If you want to support my work, please visit this page and use PayPal to send a contribution. 

Does your youth-serving org have a blog?

I've been sharing images from the Kumu.io project created by the IVMOOC student team at Indiana University in my last few posts.  Below is another.  This shows participation in the two 2011 conferences. 

I created this after spending time yesterday updating the list of blogs written by tutor/mentor program staff and leaders.  One was by a college student working at Femi Memorial Outreach.  I looked at the 2011 conferences to see if I could find the program and created this image. I circled Femi Memorial Outreach.  You can do the same.  Open the map at this link.

If you search the Femi blog for "tutor/mentor" you'll find a few articles written about the conference. 

In this one she wrote:

Keeping up the Tutor Mentor Connection
If you guys have been keeping up with our posts, you'd know that I mention the Tutor Mentor Institute more than any other organization. When I started working seriously with Femi Memorial Outreach, my first big non-profit conference was sponsored by the Tutor Mentor Institute. I think I learned more in that one, activity packed, day than I had in my first month as an administrator and program developer.

In this one she wrote:

This past Friday I went to the Tutor-Mentor Conference. There was an outstanding turnout from various different education and mentor programs from across the Chicago area. I don't think I fully realized the impact and breadth of education non-profits throughout the Chicago area until Friday.

On the surface, the scene looked like a group of regular people, sleepy eyed, and pounding back cups of coffee as the 8a.m conference began. But, throughout the day people slowly removed their shell and opened up about their projects: executive directors, media relation managers, tutors, and people with projects so new, they hadn't even started yet. The level of enthusiasm was unending.

If you explore the conference participation map you'll find many organizations who participated multiple times.  If you browse the conference tab on this blog, you'll see more than 200 articles.  In a few you'll find links to stories others wrote about their participation.

In 2014 Steve Sewell wrote this article and Valerie Leonard wrote this article.

Kelly Fair of Polished Pebbles wrote this article in 2014. 

I was prompted to look at the list after seeing an announcement from Jeffrey Beckham, Jr., the Executive Director of Chicago Scholars, introducing an article he posted on Substack.com.  It was titled, "The Democracy our Young People Deserve".  I hope you'll read it.

Sadly, my list of blogs has many that are no longer being written and too few from the more than 100 Chicago area youth serving programs on my lists.  

I look at the websites on my list at least once each year, just to make sure the links are working. I'm also trying to find out if they are writing blogs or are using media like Substack.com or YouTube to share their ideas. 

I need your help.  Please look at what local programs are doing and how they are sharing their "What works and what does not work." messages. If you find blog articles or other places where programs are sharing, please send the link to me via LinkedIn, Twitter, BlueSky or Facebook.

In response to the comment I posted on his article, Jeffrey Beckham, Jr. wrote, "And I deeply agree with your invitation. We need more tutor and mentor leaders telling their stories publicly through blogs and reflection. The narrative must belong to those building hope, not only those creating fear."

I agree.  

Are you hosting events and want to map participation? Visit this page to learn about the open source mapping tool created in 2025 by IVMOOC students at Indiana University.  

Thanks for reading.  If you're able to support my work with a contribution, please visit this page. 

Planning a conference? Building a network?

Last week I posted an article on Substack.com titled, "Start Planning for Fall 2026 Tutor/Mentor Programs". 

You can view the article here. In it I showed a few slides from a planning calendar that I developed in the late 70s, which helped me grow the tutor/mentor programs I led from 1975 to 2011.  The annual January celebration of mentoring should boost the planning process so that existing programs improve from year-to-year and new programs form where more are needed.  I'd love to find visual essays from other programs that describe their planning cycle.

I started connecting with leaders of other Chicago youth programs in the mid 1970s and that led to the formation of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.  One strategy led to the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences which we held in Chicago every six months from May 1994 to May 2015. These were part of the public awareness strategy we launched and an effort to draw leaders and supporters of Chicago area volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs together to share ideas and build relationships. 

A few years ago I created the concept map shown below, as a guide others could use in organizing their own conferences.

At the far right I've added a section focused on collecting data to help event organizers understand who attended, who they connected with, and "who's missing".  This points to the event mapping resource created in late 2025 by a team of IVMOOC students from Indiana University.  

In a previous article I showed the front page of an "Open Source Network Mapping" app created by the team. click here to open

If you open the "learn" tab at the top of the home page  you'll find some really clear information about how to design forms that collect network data effectively and how to turn this into visualizations on Kumu, Gephi or Tableau.  I show a few of the pages below.  Click on an image to enlarge it. 

Getting Started: What This Tool Does

Scroll down on the Getting Started page and you'll see "The Complete Workflow"

Continue scrolling down to descriptions of "External Visualization Software" such as Kumu and Gephi.  

Continue to scroll down and you'll see brief descriptions of "Key Concepts" and "Why Use Network Graphs?"

Next, open the Form Creation Guide tab - click here

Scroll down and you'll see "Every Network Form Needs These 3 Sections"

Next is a section showing "Form Design by Experience Level --  Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced".

Continue to scroll down to "After You Create Your Form". 

Perhaps before you create your form you want to learn more about "Nodes and Edges".  click here and open the page shown below.

The next section shows how to export your data to Kumu or Gephi. click here

The next sections describes some "Real-World Use Cases". click here

Some examples of Kumu Network Visualizations are shown - click here

Another example is the visualization of Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference participants from 1994 to 2015.  I've shared a few examples of this in previous articles, such as this one.

I've also pointed to many other examples of using Kumu and/or NodeXL.  This concept map points to a few of them.  Follow Kumu on LinkedIn and you'll see examples that they post every week.

I hope you'll agree with me that the work done by the IVMOOC team is excellent, and valuable.

Share this article with anyone who is creating events intended to bring people together on an on-going basis, to stimulate learning, reinforce work already being done, and innovate new solutions where they are needed.  Every city in the world should have a group doing what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been doing since 1993.  This network mapping tool event planning process can become a valuable asset.

Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram and/or Mastodon (see links here) and share how you're using these ideas, and work you're already doing.  

If you'd like to connect on ZOOM or another platform to learn more about this resource or any of the ideas I share on this blog, just reach out to me.  

Finally, if you value what I'm sharing, please visit this page and make a contribution to help Fund the work. 

Will any ML King, Jr. events include maps?

This weekend marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. The important messages I've taken from this are "Just don't forget." and "There's a lot of work still to do."

I've written on this topic often in the past. Here are some articles I encourage you to revisit. If you look at January articles since 2005, you'll find a few more.

January 20, 2025 article - Notebook LM review of Tutor/Mentor Connection  (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011 - present) 

January 15, 2024 article - What if Dr. King, Jr. Followers Had Applied Spatial Thinking?

January 13, 2023 article - "I Have a Dream, too" 

January 18, 2021 article - Service Learning in Support of Dr. M.L. King, Jr's Dream.

January 20, 2019 article - How I'll Honor ML King Jr. Holiday

January 19, 2013 article - following my participation in a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. event at the University of Chicago.

October 11, 2012 article - General Powell saying "This isn't Charity."

Nov 11, 2011 article - "War on Poverty Continues"

July 4, 2011 article "Freedom is not Free"

Jun2, 2, 2005 article "Jesus or Martin Luther King, Jr. As CEO: Think about it."

Imagine if Dr. King, Jr. had had a projection screen at his events, on which he produced a map showing the high poverty areas of the US, with overlays showing racial demographics. What if he said, "This map shows all the places where people live in poverty, have less access to education and jobs, and have less chance for their children and grandchildren to share in the American Dream."

Then, imagine that he said "I'm going to check this map every 10 years from now for the next 50 years so I see a growth in learning opportunities, social justices programs, increased jobs opportunities, growing personal engagement from people who don't live in these areas, lending a hand to those who do."

With that he could have said, "Sharing this stage in 50 years will be young men and women of all colors who started life in one of these high poverty areas, but who now not only are well placed in jobs and careers, but are examples of leadership that is still working to fill this entire map with resources, talent, programs and opportunities that help future generations speed along this path to the American Dream."

He did not have those tools and I don't know if he ever thought this way. However, in 50 years we could see evidence of work done by many to create such a future.

After the prayer meetings, service projects, and other things you'll do today, dedicate some time to reading my posts and sharing them with others.  If you know of people using GIS maps, or Concept Maps, in their blog posts and/or events today, please share the links.

Use Internet Archive while my website is not opening

My Tutor/Mentor website has not been opening for the past week. I'm working to get that fixed.

In the meantime, you can view the site on the Internet Archive.  This link points to the last update in December 2025.  All of the internal links seem to be working.

As you celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday, learn to use websites like mine as an on-going resource.

Use this resource to map and analyze your networks

The information below is from a new page on my website that I launched to show work done by a team of students from the Information Visualization (IVMOOC) class at Indiana University. This is a project they had been working on for me since September 2025.  

I'm very impressed with the work they did. This visualization shows participation in one of the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences held in Chicago between May 1994 and May 2015. You can see it in this article.  Open the Kumu map - click here

In the article and on my website I show several other views that I created from the interactive Kumu project. However, this was only a demonstration of what's possible.  On social media I've been encouraging youth and volunteers from Chicago tutor/mentor programs to dig into the map and find their own organization, then share a screenshot showing what conferences you were part of.

To understand the value of this project, I urge you to read the IVMOOC team final report (click here).

Then take time to study the "Open Source Network Mapping" app created by the team. (click here).

Then look at the "How-To-Guide" that provides step by step information.

In the Project Overview the IVMOOC students wrote: "The Network Map is an event network visualization platform that helps event organizers collect participation and connection data, automatically convert it into network-ready nodes and edges, and explore insights through an analytics dashboard. Outputs can be exported to tools like Kumu.io and Gephi for deeper relationship mapping and network analysis." 

Then, look at the Git Hub page for the project. click here

On the home page you'll find this description. "Network Map - Event Network Visualization Platform. A full-stack web application for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing participant connections from events. Transform survey responses into interactive network graphs and analytics dashboards."

This is the third time since 2008 that the IVMOOC project has looked at the Tutor/Mentor Connection (which has been led through Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011).  Click here to read the 2015 project report.

I've been reaching out to universities for help since the 1990s. It's part of an on-going invitation to engage students, faculty and alumni of universities in Chicago and throughout the world.

Read this post and find a PDF that shows 30 years of engagement, yet also shows no strategic, long-term effort where a stream of students work on the T/MC project while in college, then when they are alumni, with the goal of creating long-term impact on the lives of people living in high poverty areas. 

I invite students and faculty to help me do that, by learning about the tool, and why it's important by reading articles on my blog and in my library.  Then, by creating your own event mapping project, perhaps showing how people at your university are connected around specific issues.

Please connect and introduce yourself to me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (see links here).