Create your on pin buttons!

Over the past few days my #clmooc friend Algot Runeman, who you can find on Mastodon, as been sharing pin buttons.  In this article he shows how he makes them and how he wore a different pin button every day while he was a teacher. His students loved it!

This seems like something that could be an activity in any site-based tutor/mentor program, which is why I'm sharing it.  If you read his article you'll find several pages of pins that he created in the past, which you can use as you make your own.  Or you can create your own.

This would fit well with creative activities like the Student Voices project at Tutoring Chicago. Below is one student creation which you can view in this PDF.

As programs are recruiting volunteers for the new school year, imagine having pin-buttons created by your own students and volunteers to hand out at recruitment fairs and events. 

I see ideas like this because I scroll through my LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon, BlueSky and Facebook post each day.  I hope you'll connect with me in one, or more, of these places.

Finally, I depend on financial support from a small group of people (even though I'm not a 501-c-3) to keep doing this work. Visit this page if you can help. 

It "takes a village"

Apply this thinking to preserving a democracy and creating equal opportunities for everyone.

In building the Tutor/Mentor Connection since 1993  (now Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC) I've borrowed from many sources.  One was Chicago's United Way/Crusade of Mercy, where I served as Loaned Executive from 1990 to 1993. 

Below is a concept map that visualizes the African proverb: "It takes a village to raise a child."  

If you click here, you can find 30 articles where I've used this "It Takes a Village" concept since I started this blog in 2005.  You can scroll back to 2007 to find an early version, hand drawn, before I created the concept map version.

I use the ideas as a strategy that needs to be growing in cities all across the country, and demonstrated with web sites that show a commitment visualized in the strategy map below.



When people in business, media, entertainment, politics, religion, education, colleges, and every other part of the "village" adopt this commitment, with themselves shown in the blue box at the top of the graphic, then we can begin to build the public will and long-term commitment needed to fill every high poverty neighborhood in a city with a wide range of supports needed to help kids move successfully and safely from birth to adult lives free of poverty.

When I was a Loaned Executive I collected donation history for 10-15 companies, showing per capita giving, percent participation, leadership giving, etc. within a company and within similar companies in the Chicago region.  I then briefed CEOs of major corporations who then met with CEOs who they did business with, or had an influence, (and were my accounts). The goal was to solicit campaign pledges each year that grew each company's giving history. 

I borrowed this strategy when forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

My goal since 1993 was that leaders in each industry (shown as clusters on the village concept map) would adopt a Chief Crusader role and would a) commit to recruiting volunteers and providing funding for youth tutor/mentor programs from their own company; and b) would recruit other leaders in their industry, or geographic region, to make the same commitments. 

Over time that would have led to consistent funding and volunteer support to tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty area of the region.  

That has not happened. Yet, to reduce violence and improve workforce readiness, it needs to happen. 

How to get started? Make a leadership commitment, as a teacher, a college professor, a Rabbi, a CEO, then appoint someone to take the lead. Start a learning process, where you open and close every node on the strategy map so you know the information it's sharing, and you know what your commitment involves.

Role of Leaders - How CEOs can help inner city youth from birth to work by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

View these presentations, created by interns, as part of their own learning between 2006 and 2015. Youth and adults could be creating similar presentations, focusing on their community and their strategies.

Create a version of the strategy map and share it on your website and blog. Teach others to use it.

Raising kids and helping them be healthy, productive, contributing adults who can keep America great, and keep this planet safe and nurturing of all of its different populations and resources...human, animal, plant... is something that everyone should be able to agree on.

It does take a village. But until we have responsible, on-going, commitments of time, talent and dollars from every part of the village, supporting youth in the most economically challenged parts of every city, these will just be empty words.

That means students, volunteers, college researchers, and others will need to learn to create maps that show who in the village is involved, and who is still not involved.  You can see some examples of event mapping of past Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, at this link. Many different forms of mapping are highlighted in articles on the Mappingforjustice blog.

Part of the learning that people do will need to include finding ways to map participation .

I've been posting ideas on this blog, on web sites and in printed newsletters since 1994. The tags on the side of this blog are shown in this graphic, and in articles like this,  in an effort to help people navigate through this vast web of information and ideas.

If you share this commitment, please share this and other ideas shared on this blog and my Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.  Help build the village in every part of the country.

10-28-2024 update - visit this article on LinkedIn to read about the cycle of networks.  

Thanks for reading.

Please connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.  

If you value the ideas I'm sharing, please visit this page and send a small contribution.