eMentoring and On-Line Documentation

 On Friday I listened to a webinar hosted by the National Mentoring Partnership which focused on e-Mentoring and ways organizations have responded to Covid19 by building on-line connections.  Below I've posted a few Tweets.

When the video from yesterday's #mentoringAmplifies is available I encourage those in the #tutor #mentor ecosystem to view it. The #ementoring ideas could be applied in many places, including to site-based programs that will continue virtual learning in the future. https://t.co/uFbZHcLSxS

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) March 20, 2021

another

I hope donors are looking at the @icouldbeorg model and thinking of ways they could help local #tutor #mentor programs become a partner. No sense reinventing the wheel when it's been perfected. W/o funds hard for programs to adopt. #MentoringAmplifies https://t.co/4Zz5G0GKsm

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) March 19, 2021

another

#eMentoring programs like @CricketMediaInc helped sustain adult mentoring connections with youth even when schools had difficulty connecting. eMentoring opens access to kids who might not normally have access to a site-based program. #MentoringAmplifies pic.twitter.com/ff9kDl3vI9

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) March 19, 2021

another

Youth Mentoring Caucus website: https://t.co/6gmYiJ9Hlz#MentoringAmplifies

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) March 19, 2021

I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program from 1975 to 2011. Since both kids and adults were volunteers I used participation tracking to monitor matches and evaluate program success.  My primary tool for doing this was Excel spreadsheets and manual data input and monitoring. 

In 2008-9 we introduced an on-line documentation system, called Student-Volunteer History and Tracking system (SVHATS).  Unfortunately this site is no longer available, but here's one page that's available on the Internet archive and here's a series of articles on the Cabrini Blog that refer to SVHATS.   Here's a PDF that describes the planning that was involved in building SVHATS.

If you compare this to what I Could Be has created over the past 15 years you'll see that we were headed in that direction.  Unfortunately the 2008 financial meltdown reduced our funding and ability to further develop SVHATS and then my leaving Cabrini Connections in 2011 removed the energy and commitment to using an on-line platform to support youth, volunteers and staff.  

I've been using maps since 1993 to visualize the need for well-organized, constantly improving, mentor-rich non-school programs in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other places.

I maintain a list of nearly 200 non-school and school-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs, and point to many arts, STEM, and service learning programs in the main Tutor/Mentor library.  

Everyone of them could be using the I Could Be platform, or something similar, if donors and tech volunteers would step forward to offer help.  This means providing on-going operating support, not one-time development grants.  

My graphics visualize long-term goals of helping kids living in poverty move through school and into adult lives. On-line platforms enable kids and volunteers to connect with each other, and with program resources, for a lifetime!  This was never possible in the years before 2000 and still is not the vision of many youth organizations or public schools.

On Thursday I watched a different webinar, hosted by the Shaping.edu program at Arizona State University, which was focused on "Promoting Broadband Access".  Below is a Tweet from that webinar.

Wondering why #BroadbandAccess is important for work & learning? @cosmodog, through LinkedIn Learning, hosted a session w/@L_Geringer, @techzebu, @rubenrp & me yesterday to talk about @ShapingEDU's initiative: https://t.co/ui2XtwXqum. #ConnectedForLearning #DigitalAffluece pic.twitter.com/lu1qSnEDhd

— Paul Signorelli (@paulsignorelli) March 19, 2021

Among the presenters was Paul  Signorelli who I met via the ETMOOC event in early 2013.  I've been a fan of Paul's blog and I encourage you to read some of his "changing the world articles". Several focus on digital access. 

Shaping.edu is described at "Shaping.edu is a community of dreamers, doers and drivers shaping the future of learning in the digital age. We are value-led changemakers who envision positive learning futures and undertake concrete action to bring about those futures, together." Visit the website and learn about the "10 actions needed to shape the future of learning in the digital age". Anyone can join this group. Much is done on-line.  

The Thursday and Friday events are connected. Without increasing the number of people who care about the challenges facing people in poverty and who act regularly to provide an on-going flow of dollars, technology, volunteers, talent and leadership into EVERY youth program, in EVERY high poverty neighborhood, schools and non-profits will not be able to adopt technology like that of I Could Be, nor keep it part of their programs for 10 to 20 years, with constant improvement. 

In almost all of my articles I call for those who read them to turn around and share them with others, and teach them to do the same.  That's how I'll finish this one. 

Colleges and Universities have a constant flow of talent and alumni who could be leading a Tutor/Mentor Connection 4-part strategy as part of their own learning and service.  While my focus is on helping kids in poverty via organized tutor/mentor programs, the 4-part strategy could be used to aggregate information about digital access, racial justice, climate crisis, or any other issue.

Here are a few articles where I've outlined that opportunity.  

I'm on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram (see links) and hope to connect and share ideas with people who read my blog articles or are doing similar work in different places. 

I'm also dependent of a small group of donors to help keep sharing these ideas. Click here if you'd like to make a contribution. 

New Report about GetInChicago Anti Violence effort Requires Deeper Learning

In my email yesterday I received notice of a new report by The Chapin Hall Center at the University of Chicago, which looks at the start up stages of the first round of Get In Chicago grant recipients. It's titled "Get In Chicago Capacity Assessment".

The report digs into some areas of planning and program design that I'm really interested in, particularly the topic of organizational learning. However, it uses a lot of jargon from the research and evaluation field that I'm not certain people involved in developing, leading and funding youth programs are fluent with.

On Monday I included the graphic below in this article, showing how people from different countries, meeting on Facebook, were digging into complex ideas. 

I think that unless you were a student enrolled in an advanced degree program on evaluation and uses of evidence to support program fidelity you'd not have the time to read all the information available to you, nor to be involved in daily face-to-face discussions that might help you understand what you are reading.

If you're the leader of a small to medium sized youth serving program,  you'd be constantly challenged with staff turnover, meaning information retention is not happening withing the organization, and you'd be challenged with finding 100% of the operating dollars you need to be a strong organization able to do the work the grant maker hopes to accomplish.

For the most part, programs are fighting this battle on their own, or in small groups. They need to be connected, in many ways.

Thus, my passion for the internet comes from the fact that you can read this information from any place in the world, at any time of the day, and you can engage in many ways with others to build your understanding and to innovate ways to overcome the challenges of building and sustaining mentor-rich programs that reach k-20 youth in high poverty neighborhoods and help them move through school and into adult jobs out of poverty and beyond the daily reach of violence.

This won't happen if the different stakeholders are not making an effort to connect in on-line learning, and if some donors, including  universities, don't make an on-going effort to host on-line spaces where deeper learning, refection and idea-sharing are taking place.

I'd like to see dozens of people digging into reports like this and creating annotated visualizations like the one I did on Monday. This could even be a learning-project for youth in these programs.

If this interests you, let's connect.

I want to do better but don't have time to learn how.

This video featuring Sir Ken Robinson is one of several from the 2012 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference that you can find on YouTube. Below the video I've highlighted some quotes from the video and provided some comments.



In the first section of the video Robinson pointed out two challenges that I think are relevant to everything I've been writing about on this blog.

1) "Practitioners don't have time for theory" - To me he's saying 'The people in the classroom, or leading tutor/mentor programs, don't have time to view all of the videos, read all the blogs, or read all the research this is being produced.' This is a critical issue. Learning should be focusing on adults who need more about social problems and solutions, not just kids going from first grade through traditional education systems.

2) "Policy makers don't know much about theory or practice"...This is even more important. The people who are making policy decisions at the government level, or who make funding decisions at the corporate or foundation level are focused on short term issues and are often too busy to spend time learning from all of the information available to them. How do we engage them in learning from all of the information that is being shared?

I wrote an article a few weeks ago showing how it's hard to get non profit leaders to collaborate on fixing some of the problems they face because they are too busy fighting for day-to-day survival and success in their work. I hope that my articles stimulate thinking among others so we can innovate ways to engage more people in learning from each other and from on-line information.

Robinson also said in this video "No Social Change is Linear. It is unpredictable and dynamic." This article about Evaluating Social Innovation is one of many I've posted in the Tutor/Mentor Connection library that shows challenges non profits face. I feel that if we can engage volunteers, donors, policy makers, practice leaders, etc. in on-going on-line learning and relationship building we can create shared understanding of the goals of innovative projects before we begin to frame strategies to achieve them. My leadership of tutor/mentor programs intended to engage volunteers as leaders so they would give more of their own time, talent and dollars to help do the day-to-day work because they had a personal understanding of where we were headed and how well we were doing in getting there.

Robinson recommended that we "Engage in the flow of knowledge" and stated "We learn from collaboration". I've focused on site-based volunteer-rich non-school programs because they connect adults from beyond poverty -- and from the workplace -- with youth and families living in high poverty neighborhoods in an on-going learning process. Robinson talked about the "economic purpose of education". If business leaders see a strategic value in supporting employee involvement and use of company resources to make constantly improving tutor/mentor programs available in more places, we would begin to see programs in more places with talented staff who keep volunteers and youth involved for multiple years, and support learning by both youth and volunteers. Such programs could support a constant increase in the resources available and the number of people involved.

This animation by one of my interns illustrates how supporting the volunteer's growth can make a difference.

I've written a number of articles focused on learning. I think that we won't solve our K-12 education problems until we build an adult-learning support system where adults become personally engaged in service projects and through that are engaged in learning more about why the service is needed and ways they and other adults need to be more consistent in providing the resources to support the places where adults and kids connect.

Those places can be schools operating from 8am to 3:30pm, or non school programs operating right after school or in the evening or weekend hours.

Robinson said "There is everything you can do." I agree. We all have a role to play in creating social change and making mentor-rich programs available in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.

I hope you have found time to read this far and hope you'll share this with others.

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.

Expanding the Network

I've been on-line since the mid 1990s and have connected with a wide range of creative thinkers.  One is George Siemmens, who writes the 3Learning Space blog. He wrote about the Tutor/Mentor Connection in this article (now only available via the Internet Archive).

In 2011,  Nicola Avery, who lives in the United Kingdom, saw that post, and began spending time learning about the T/MC by browsing our web sites.  She created a series of videos that she posted to the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum. A screen shot from the video section of the T/MC forum is shown below.  Unfortunately, these are no longer on line (as of 2018)

These videos described the T/MC OHATS site and shared this information with her own network in the UK. She created the video to help them understand how we're trying to document actions that would lead to our goal of helping more kids and volunteers connect in well organized, mentor-rich, programs.

While the video is a useful tool, you can learn more about OHATS here. What's really important is how this demonstrates how people from any part of the world can give time, talent and/or dollars to help T/MC do its work in Chicago, so they can borrow the ideas and use then where they are.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be writing articles showing how the past decade has impacted Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection and what we have accomplished despite the challenges. If you review this OHATS section you'll see charts that show actions we've taken each year since 2000 to achieve our mission.

I hope you'll recognize that if you invest in T/MC and increase the resources we have for the next 10 years, we can multiply the impact of what we're doing.

How can you tell what kind of program it is?

National Mentoring Month is starting in a few days and there will be many ads and public service announcements showing how mentors have been an important part of someone's life.

Hopefully this will motivate many people to go to the internet and search for programs where they can volunteer time, talent and hopefully dollars. One place they can look is the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which has an interactive, searchable map that enables people to zoom into different sections of the Chicago area to learn what non profits, if any, offer tutoring/mentoring. Another feature is a library of links to more than 200 web sites of youth serving programs, organized by sections of the city and suburbs.

But, how does someone tell the difference between one organization, and another?

I ponder this often, and as I was cleaning my desk today (what a mess!) I found some notes that I had written more than a year ago. Here's what I'd encourage you to look for when searching for places to get involved:

a) does the organization have a web site, blog, or other written material that outlines the vision, mission and strategy of the organization?

b) does the web site include a "theory of change" showing how volunteers in that tutoring and/or mentoring program help youth; and how the overall activities of the organization help youth and volunteers meet regularly, stay connected, and build long-term (more than one year) relationships?

c) does the web site of organization show a "learning strategy" meaning, it points its volunteers, students and donors to other tutor/mentor programs, and resources, that can be used to benchmark, and compare, or to find help that is not available at that specific program location?

d) does the web site include a history of performance, including some statistics showing how many youth and adults have participated on a regular basis each year, and for multiple years. Such a history would show how long the organization has offered tutoring and/or mentoring, and how many years the organization has been continuously connected to youth in the same neighborhood of Chicago, or any other city.

e) If the organization makes claims of "graduation and college attendance rates" do they base this on the number of youth who started with the program, and who are still participating when they graduated? Or do they fudge the numbers as the Kauffman Scholars were accused of doing in the Dec/Jan 2010 issue of Youth Today? By fudging, I mean they do not include kids who dropped out of the program in early years when they report graduation or college attendance rates.

f) does the web site include testimonials/stories of impact from youth and alumni who have been part of the program in the current or former years

g) how does this organization work with others in its zip code, city or state to share ideas, build capacity, and assure that more kids have access to great programs, not just the kids in that program?

h) does the organization post financial reports, such as audits or 990 reports, on its web site?

While the Tutor/Mentor Connection maintains a directory of Chicago area volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs, and a links library, we don't have the manpower to be doing an ongoing review of each program to determine which meet these criteria. Our goal is to educate consumers (volunteers, parents, donors, program leaders, etc.) so they can compare one program to another, with a goal that all programs are constantly trying to be the best at what they do. This is because each program serves different kids in a different part of the city.

They all need to be as good as they can be.

Many organizations will not demonstrate everything I've listed. There may be other criteria that some people might want to add to this list. My point is, no program can reach this level of excellence, and stay there, without continuous investment of time, talent and flexible operating dollars, from people and partners, who get involved, and stay involved, for many years.

If you are looking to get involved, think beyond being a tutor or mentor. Inventory your talent, resources and networks, and look for ways that you can help one or more tutoring/mentoring programs on our Chicago Programs list, or in your own community, become the best at what they do, and the model everyone else is trying to duplicate.

We created a forum on our Ning Site where you can post reviews of programs, and discuss what it takes to help a program move from being good, to being great.

Getting Realistic about Funding Non Profits

There are two discussions on the Mentor Exchange forum that I encourage you to visit.

One is titled "Getting Realistic about Funding Non Profits" and focuses on the infrastructure costs that are essential to building great businesses, but which are terribly underfunded in non profit organizations. Read the article titled The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle, by Don Howard, Ann Goggins Gregory.

I can't tell you how often I look at the guidelines of potential donors which say "we don't pay for salaries". How would a business operate if there were no people on staff? Yet, that's what many grant makers seem to expect.

The second article is titled "Measuring Outcomes Across Multiple Youth Serving Organizations and Programs". The recommended reading is this report:

Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact, by Mark Kramer, Marcie Parkhurst, and Lalitha Vaidyanathan, FSG Social Impact Advisors, 2009
http://www.fsg-impact.org/ideas/pdf/Breakthroughs_in_Shared_Measurement.pdf

If volunteers,leaders, board members, donors, policy makers can read the same information, and view shared actions toward common goals, maybe we can move more consistently toward the real work of helping kids.

In 1993 when we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) there were four general goals:

Collect and share information about tutor/mentor programs operating in Chicago;

Increase frequency of media stories, so more people looked at the information;

Help people understand the information, so they can use it in their own actions;

Facilitate this understanding so it leads to a more consistent flow of volunteers and donors to all of the tutor/mentor programs in the city, while helping each program constantly improve their own efforts to keep kids and volunteers connected.

Our Theory of Change is that if we take this role, more people will use the information to help good programs grow in every poverty neighborhood.

We've been documenting what we do to achieve those goals since 2000 and this chart shows that we've done close to 1000 actions intended to increase visibility, while we've documented over 600 actions that help people understand and use the information.

You see similar charts at T/MC OHATS . Viewing this works best in Internet Explorer.

We've never had much money to do this work, yet, we've done what we can each year. Imagine if there were hundreds of leaders in business, faith groups, government, philanthropy, etc. with the same four goals, and who were using this system to document actions they were taking each day to help kids in poverty move to careers.

Visit the T/MC OHATS and look at the metrics charts. If you want to log in and read some of what we've documented, and see how the system works, you can log in using GUEST as the username and VISITOR as the password.

If you want to become a partner to the T/MC, and record your own actions toward these goals, we'd be happy to add you as a recorder. That's the aim of this system. We can't achieve these goals if it's just me and my small organization doing this. We won't know what we've all accomplished if we don't have some sort of documentation system to tract the impact of collective actions over many years.

If you think this is valuable, and that the T/MC is providing a needed service, we'd appreciate your financial support.