President Obama Launches "My Brother’s Keeper Initiative"

In this White House Fact Sheet, you can read about the new initiative, titled "My Brother’s Keeper", which is a new initiative to help every boy and young man of color who is willing to do the hard work to get ahead.

This page from the Summer 1999 Tutor/Mentor Newsletter, shows that State Senator Barack Obama was a speaker at the May 1999 Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference in Chicago. I met him, shook his hand, had my picture taken and invited him to build his own understanding of strategies I'd been sharing since 1993 to help youth living in high poverty neighborhoods become part of mentor-rich programs helping them through school and into jobs and careers. I had met previously with Michelle Obama at the University of Chicago in the mid 1990s and asked for her support of Tutor/Mentor Connection through involvement of students at the University.

This is a photo from an August/September Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign press conference, held in Chicago in 2000 or 2001 when Lura Lynn Ryan, First Lady of Illinois, was honorary chair person of the campaign and Paul Vallas, CEO of Chicago Public Schools was a speaker.

Arne Duncan was Vallas' assistant in 2000 and 2001. I met with Arne at Vallas's office in 2000 and 2001 and he committed his support for Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies beyond the Vallas tenure at CPS. At that point I had no idea he would be the next CEO of CPS. I had known Arne since he was the first recipient of the Chicago Bar Foundation's Lend A Hand Award in 1994. At that time he was leading a tutor/mentor program in the Hyde Park area of Chicago.

In the fact sheet from the White House I don't see a graphic like this one, which I've been sharing since the mid 1990s to show the need for long-term support of youth in all high poverty neighborhoods. I've not seen maps and graphics like this used in many leadership initiatives, at the city, state of federal level in the 20 years that I've been sharing maps and graphics in my own print newsletters and web sites.

As the President was launching his new initiative, the Illinois Mentoring Partnership published a "State of Mentoring in Illinois" Report. Download the full report, here.

This graphic is from a page showing challenges mentoring programs face, with the number one challenge being lack of consistent funding.

I've been doing surveys of tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region since the late 1990s. This graphic is from a summary of a survey done at Tutor/Mentor Conferences. It shows that the most important needs were "people" and "resources". In this 2009 blog article results of a newer survey show the same need for funding and talent.

I've been sharing graphics like this for more than a decade, showing the common needs of all tutor/mentor programs and the need for programs in all high poverty neighborhoods.

In the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC Library, and on the library at Scribd.com I've shared short, illustrated strategy essays, showing how leaders from every sector need to be consistently innovating ways to connect needed resources to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other cities.

One of these is titled ROLE OF LEADERS. Another is titled "NO GENERAL GOES TO WAR WITHOUT A MAP"

A new presentation showing how resource providers need to be equally involved in building high quality tutor/mentor programs is available, with a video done by a 2014 intern to break this down into easier-to-understand pieces.

Mr. President, we don't need a new program, we need new commitments. We need you and other leaders, including mentoring partnerships in every state, to adopt leadership and marketing strategies that support existing programs who already work with youth of color, both boys and girls, so that they can stay connected, constantly growing to be great, and expand where it makes sense. Teach leaders and supporters of new programs draw from an on-line library of ideas, aggregations of links to existing programs and research, etc., such as the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library, to launch new programs where our maps and data show a need that is not currently being met with an existing program.

One commitment would be for you and other leaders to spend just one hour a week browsing articles on my web site, and following the links to other web sites that I point to. Don't delegate this. The power of the Internet is that you and every other leader can be directly involved with information, and with the people trying to put this information to work.

Make this commitment and pass it on to the next President, and the one after that so such a commitment is consistent and grows for the next 20 years. With such a commitment a growing number of youth of color, born in 2014, will be in college, vocational schools, the military and/or in jobs by 2034.

Without this commitment our grandchildren will be able to search Google (or whatever replaces it) and find a long list of Presidential announcements of new programs that over time fail to deliver because of a lack of consistent funding, talent and other resources required in every program location.

Start of New School Year for Tutor/Mentor Programs

If you're the leader of a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program you're probably working on volunteer and student recruitment, screening, orientation and training, and matching or students and volunteers right now. Every year from 1974 to September 2010 that's what I was doing last week and will be doing for the next two weeks.

My involvement has been for so many years that it's difficult to communicate my ideas and experiences in short articles and one-on-one discussions. Thus, I've created a web site with a depth of information that any one can use as part of their own personal learning strategy. I created this time line a few years ago to show growth of the non-school tutor/mentor programs I've led since 1974, and to show the growth of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I formed in 1993 to help every high poverty neighborhood in the Chicago region have mentor-rich programs like those I had been leading.

You can see from looking at the time line that the Tutor/Mentor Connection concept really began in 1976 when I started building a list of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs and inviting leaders to gather monthly for "lunch and learn" where we shared ideas, training tips, handbooks, etc. and built supportive relationships and friendships. It was this social/emotional support that kept me involved for so many years because within your own organization very few people really understand everything a leader has to do to keep the lights on and the doors open. When you connect with people who hold a similar role in other organizations, you don't have to tell what you do. They know.

The graphic above shows the growth of the tutor/mentor program at Montgomery Ward Corporate headquarters in Chicago from 1965 to 1992. It was in late 1992 when I and six other volunteers created Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The original tutoring program at Wards served youth from 2nd to 6th grade and included a few 7th and 8th graders. Parents kept asking us to extend the program further into high school years but since all leaders were volunteers who held full time jobs at Wards and other companies and we were serving 300 pairs of youth and volunteers by 1990, we had our hands full.

By creating a new organization starting teens at 7th grade we were able to create a new structure to help kids from the original program move through high school. At the same time, we realized that no one in Chicago had a master list of non-school tutor/mentor programs, and thus, no leader could lead any consistent advertising/marketing intended to help high quality programs reaching k-12 youth grow throughout the city. This was during the time when 7 year-old Dantrell Davis was killed in Chicago and the media were demanding "action and responsibility". We decided to split whatever resources we could generate and created the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

A second time line shows growth from 1993 through 2011 and includes milestones such as when we held the first Tutor/Mentor Conference in May 1994, when we formed a partnership with the Chicago Bar Foundation's Lend A Hand Program in 1994, and when we began to organize an Aug/Sept citywide tutor/mentor volunteer recruitment campaign in 1995. This also show when we published the first printed Tutor/Mentor Program Directory, when we launched our first web site, and when we put the Directory in an on-line Program Locator in 2004.

Visit this section on Pinterest to see other graphics showing significant events since the creation of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.

I'm no longer leading the Cabrini Connections program (since mid 2011) and I miss that level of involvement with teens and volunteers. However, I'm still spending my time this week trying to attract the attention of volunteers, donors, media and others who will help tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities reach more kids and help transform their lives as a result of the services provided throughout the coming school year. You can find a list of Chicago youth organizations at this link and see the interactive Program Locator map here.

Read more articles in this blog to see how support for these programs needs to be on-going throughout the year and into coming years. If you're involved with this work, participate in the November 4 Tutor/Mentor Conference to be held at the Metcalfe Federal Building. If you're interested in supporting the infrastructure of programs and helping the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC do this work, contact me at tutormentor two at earthlink dot net. Or on Twitter, Facebook, or Linked in.

Creating Learning Communities - Test Your Motivation

I learned more than 30 years ago that one person could not provide all the information that 100 volunteers who grew up in neighborhoods outside of Chicago's Cabrini-Green area needed to know to understand the challenges kids living in such neighborhoods face nor all that they needed to know to become effective tutors/mentors.

At least not in the traditional teacher-to-learner role.

Thus, I began to try to create a learning community, where volunteer, students, parents and other stakeholders would spend their own time reading, reflecting and learning from information I was collecting and sharing with them on a weekly basis. To understand what I mean by a "learning community" read some of the blog articles I share in this link.

This was in the mid 1970s, far earlier than when I began to learn about the power of the Internet.

For the past 30 years I've attempted to engage volunteers, board members, donors, youth, etc. in the Chicago tutor/mentor programs I've led in an on-going learning process. The information I now share on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site, this blog and other web sites I host all originated from my efforts to support the youth and volunteers who were meeting weekly at a small tutor/mentor program in Chicago.

What I've learned from this process is how difficult it is to engage busy volunteers and under-motivated young people in this effort. Thus, I'm constantly spending time in my own learning, looking for experts who seem to have mastered this process better than I.

On Sunday I spent an hour in an on-line forum with Vance Stevens who is an ESL educator based in Abu Dhabi. I've gotten to know Vance since we were first connected back in 2004. In Sunday's presentation Vance showed a process of student engagement that I think could be duplicated in schools, non-school organizations, faith groups,etc. in many places. You can view the slides and the presentation here.

I'm writing as the Democratic Presidential Convention is taking place. During last week's Republican Convention and again this week as the Democrats meet, there will be all sorts of claims made that fact-checkers will be testing to determine how far the truth has been stretched. In reading some of the commentary about the campaign fact-distortion one of the fears I sense is that too few people will actually care enough to go to the fact-checking sites to see what is being posted and too few will spend time learning about the issues and building their own personal involvement in providing solutions that government really can't provide very well, not matter how much money is spent.

That brings me back to tutoring/mentoring. Below is a map created using the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator that I launched in 2008. It's intended to support leaders from business, religion, education, politics who want to reduce violence by helping young people have more positive learning, mentoring and job development opportunities during the non-school hours and through the public schools in the neighborhood.

This map is of little use if no one looks at it, or if no one spends time reading other articles I've posted, and in reflecting, discussing, then building strategies that support existing programs already in this neighborhood while creating new ones where they are needed. I wrote about this same neighborhood in 2010 - see article.

Here's the test. Are you still reading? Did you visit Vance Stephens' site and review his presentation. If so, you are an active learner. We need more people taking this role, including young people.

Here's a PDF I created showing how young people could be involved in community information collection. Here's one showing how they can become journalists, telling stories the media do not tell. Here's one showing how young people can be leaders drawing people together to look at this information.

This presentation (click here) was done in just a few days by an intern from Illinois Institute of Technology, who is a college student from Korea.

Are you still following me? Volunteers, educators and/or staff in youth programs could be applying the concepts Vance Stevens has shared to teach young people in many neighborhoods to do research, reflect on what they read, then communicate their ideas in many formats. Read some of the articles about knowledge management, creativity and innovation posted at this link.

If this type of engaged learning becomes part of the on-going curriculum in many schools and non-school programs, we can grow a generation of young people who are more motivated to be active learners and who will use this process to engage others in community problem solving.

Visit the Chicago Program Links library and browse the list of youth organizations in the region. Find one that is convenient for you to join and reach out to offer your time and talent to organize a learning process like this. As volunteers teach young people to engage in on-going learning they are also teaching themselves.

That's the best thing about being a volunteer in a tutor/mentor program. Your life can be transformed as you work to transform the life of a young person.

If you don't have anyone collecting and sharing ideas like this in your own community I'd be happy to help you. You don't need to start from scratch. Most of the information that I share can already be applied to your own circumstances.

Getting from HERE to THERE in NonProfit Sector

In an article I wrote in December 2011 I talked about how non profits become good at what they do, then great, and how they need to stay great for many years to have an impact on young people and communities.

In this part of the Links Library I point to articles that illustrate challenges non profits have in growing from good to great.

I've created a number of graphics to illustrate this thinking which I hope are used in leadership circles throughout the country to engage others in thinking of what actions they need to take on an on-going basis to help all of the youth serving organizations in their community become world class at what they do to help kids become thriving adults.

Here's one I'd like to share:

In my own efforts I've been trying to help constantly-improving non-school tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty areas of Chicago. I use maps like this one to show where poverty is concentrated which I feel is where resources need to focus in order for a wide range or mentor-rich youth programs to form.

I've never had more than $150,000 a year to do this work which is far too few dollars to collect all of the information needed to support decisions that need to be made in many leadership sectors. Nor have I had money for advertising, training and promotions that would draw volunteers and donors to this information on a consistent basis, and at key times of the year, such as now when school is starting and all tutor/mentor programs are looking for volunteers. For the past year I've had almost not money to support this effort.

Thus, I keep looking for others who are doing some of the intelligence gathering that needs to be taking place. Here are some questions that I hope someone is asking:

* What is the "combat readiness" of each of the organizations working with youth in the Chicago region?

* What is their financial health? Do they have a consistent flow of resources to carry them through this year and into next year and beyond?

* What is their leadership strategy? Do they have experienced people devekioubg abd leading the organization's strategies?

* Who do they want to emulate? When you look at the web site (if they have one) of each youth organization do they post a list of 4-6 other youth organizations that they feel are "best in class" and that they are trying to emulate?

* What is their mission? Where would the organization's strategies fit on this graphic? How do they compare to others who do this work?

Is anyone doing the market research needed to understand how well youth organizations in the Chicago region (or in other cities) are prepared to help youth move through school and into adult lives?

I'm not looking for "generalizations" or "aggregations" of information. We should be able to put icons on maps showing the different readiness of each organization shown on the map. And leaders should be able to use this information in resource-mobilization effort that help strengthen existing organizations and fill in voids with new organizations where more are needed.

Is anyone interested in putting their name on a Think Tank or Research Institute focused on collecting and sharing this information?

Share the links in the comment section if you can answer these questions.

Help Tutor/Mentor Programs Tell Their Story

In 2008 I asked interns working with me to visit the Chicago Programs Links section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection library and visit the web site of each program to learn what they were doing and to write a brief review.

I provided this set of criteria:

* Home page features "mentoring or tutoring" with headline words and/or pictures

* Home page has easy-to-find sub-feature of "mentoring or tutoring" with words and/or pictures

* Volunteer involvement opportunity is clear

* Contact information is clear so volunteer or donor can contact program

* Case made for why tutoring/mentoring is important

* Site shows role of tutoring/mentoring in workforce development

* Site shows benefit of volunteer involvement in tutoring/mentoring on the volunteer

* Site provides links to research related to tutoring, mentoring, poverty, education, etc.

* Site links to other tutor/mentor programs in the same city

* Site links to one or more Tutor/Mentor Connection web sites and/or Program Locator

This process of looking at web sites and learning from what they do should be on-going. Every program could learn ideas from each other and use them to improve their own efforts, if they have people doing this comparison and if there were donor/investors ready with talent and dollars that programs can use for constant improvement.

However, many of the web sites don't do as well as they need to in telling the program's story. The talent and time needed to collect stories and tell them via web pages, blogs, videos, etc. is not available in every program. Thus, there is a role for volunteers from business, high schools and/or college to reach out and offer to help programs better tell their stories.

This goes along with the need for teams of volunteers to help collect information about existing tutor/mentor programs so that the Program Locator database is updated on a continuous basis. This essay shows that role.

Benchmarking. Not just for NPOs.

Over the weekend I reviewed all of the links in the Process Improvement section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection library.

I found three to web sites that talk about benchmarking.

In this one, they say "Benchmarking is a practical tool for improving performance by learning from best practices and understanding the processes by which they are achieved."

In this one, they say, "Benchmarking is the process of determining who is the very best, who sets the standard, and what that standard is. In baseball, you could argue that seven consecutive World Series Championships made the New York Yankees the benchmark."

In this one, they say "... benchmarking ...[is] ...'the process of identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices and processes from organizations anywhere in the world to help your organization improve its performance.'"



In much of the evaluation and planning information I read, there is an emphasis on building programs based on "evidence based practice". If non profit tutoring and/or mentoring programs are applying the benchmarking lessons of the three web sites I am pointing to, it seems to me each would be finding ideas to make their programs consistently better.

However, I wonder the businesses, foundations, colleges and others who want the same goal as we do at Cabrini Connections and other tutor/mentor programs, are benchmarking what they do against what competitors do to constantly innovate better ways to help youth move from birth to work.

For anyone to do effective benchmarking, they need to have the time to constantly look at what others are doing. It would help if each city had a list of youth organization web sites like the Tutor/Mentor Connection offers Chicago. If you don't have a list of programs to benchmark against, it becomes an even bigger challenge to adopt this process. We break our database down by type of program, and age group served, so benchmarking can compare programs focusing on similar populations. We even offer a set of questions organizations could use to compare their web sites against those of other tutoring/mentoring programs.

How would faith groups, or accounting firms, or engineering companies compare what their volunteer and philanthropy programs do to support tutor/mentor programs in their communities? Do they have teams of volunteers focused on this? I don't know of any web site that is aggregating links to different businesses, hospitals, faith groups, etc. with a goal of providing information for this type of benchmarking.

We do collect some links to business, hospitals, and math/science groups, that you could look at and compare your own efforts, to their efforts.

However, this is insufficient. Is anyone collecting this information? How can others who share the same goal of mentoring kids to careers improve on what they are doing if they don't have anything to benchmark against?