I along with millions of others was sad to hear news yesterday of the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush. Many tributes to her are flowing on my Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin feeds.
Below is a copy of a letter I received from Barbara Bush in 1991.
In the second paragraph she leads off saying "George Bush has said that every child deserves to have someone who knows his or her name. That is the critical kind of individual attention that can transform a child's life, and that's what a program like yours does so well."
Isaiah with mentor, Sara Caldwell
A few years ago when Tutoring Chicago (which was originally the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program when I led it between 1975 and 1992) celebrated its 50th Anniversary, the keynote speaker was alumni Isaiah Brooms. He is pictured at the left with his long-term mentor, Sara Caldwell (a founder of the Tutor/Mentor Connection).
Isaiah told a story of how important it had been to him when he first joined the tutoring program that I knew his name and how transformative that experience was in his life. He's now a college grad, married, holding a job, and raising his own two kids. In 1988, around when Isaiah joined, we had more than 250 kids enrolled and I made an effort to try to know all of their names....aided by my PC spreadsheet attendance list!
Barbara Bush continued her letter with "I salute you for reaching out to involve other corporations in establishing programs like Montgomery Ward's, and I have every hope that your experience with Cabrini-Green's children will convince others that education is everybody's business."
If you browse through the many articles I have posted on this blog, and the printed newsletters I was sending in the 1990s, you'll find me using "I hope" over and over to spread the wish that leaders in businesses, hospitals, universities, professional associations, faith groups would become strategically involved in building and sustaining mentor-rich non-school programs in all high poverty areas of Chicago,
I really believe that "It takes a village to raise a child" and that organized, non-school tutor/mentor programs can be that village for many kids.
I put this 1993 Chicago SunTimes story in an article I wrote in April 2015. I've highlighted the opening and closing sections to show the problems that were keeping big solutions to poverty from forming in the 1970s and 80s, were the same keeping them from forming in the 1990s and 2000s. Too many people want to do their own thing. Too many are reinventing the wheel. Too little commitment to long-term solutions. Too many with "not invented here" attitudes.
Thus, the problems that motivated leaders to launch the tutoring program at Montgomery Ward in 1965 and that have motivated me to form the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011, are still with us.
My resources to do this work have shrunk to almost nothing and I've been looking for new leaders to invest in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC or to adopt it and move it into a university or some other institution.
Maybe Mrs. Bush will provide some help to fuel that hope from her place with the angels in what ever Heaven there may be.
Over the next few days the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday will be celebrated with marches, breakfast speeches, and thousands of service projects. All good.
However, I want to encourage people to spend two to three hours reading and reflecting. Start by looking at this ESRI story map showing the "Life and Words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.". While we've made much progress since the 1960s, there is still a huge mountain to climb to reach a point where "all children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by their character."
Why is this important? Here's an article I saw a few years ago, titled, 'Want To Be A Leader? ‘Learn To Be Alone With Your Thoughts’ in which says William Deresiewicz, "Speaking to a plebe class at West Point, said that without solitude, it’s hard to arrive at thoughts that are your own, and hard to develop the moral compass and moral courage necessary to act on those thoughts."
In another article, I read about how it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any field. This article outlines Chapter 2 in the book "Outliers", by Malcolm Gladwell,which "puts forth the premise that to be an expert in your field requires a devotion to one’s craft for at least 10,000 hours."
I've spent more than 10,000 hours since 1975 leading a tutor/mentor program and much of that time has been spent in solitude, learning and reflection. That's where the ideas I share in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC come from. I use graphics like this one to illustrate how creating programs and services that consistently help kids overcome poverty and rise through school and into jobs and careers is a process of learning and constant experimentation. It's one that requires constant investments of talent and time, which means a constant flow of dollars.
I include a map showing poverty areas in Chicago as a reminder that resources and support needs to reach k-12 youth and families in every high poverty area, not just through a few well-known programs.
As I come across great thinking I point to it in articles like this, and archive links in the Tutor/Mentor Connection library so others can find and learn from the same ideas I'm learning from.
Most of what I'm thinking about relates to influencing the flow of resources to non-school tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods. Most of these ideas can be adopted to the same problem in other social sectors. If we can influence the flow of resources and keep talent in programs longer, we increase the organizational knowledge and the ability of each organization to constantly improve their impact on kids and the volunteers who become part of these programs.
I use concept maps to show sections of my web library and to visualize long-term strategies that need to be adopted in every city, and by leaders of every sector. Here's a map that business should visit, showing reasons to invest in helping mentor-rich programs grow in cities where they do business or where employees live.
Thus, while you honor the memory of Dr. King, Jr., spend time learning where and how you can help make his vision come true. Make this a weekly, year-round habit, not a once-a-year day of service.
In November 1999 I received a call from the Montell TV Show inviting me to New York City for the taping of their New Year's Eve program. They wanted to recognize me for work I'd been doing to help youth and volunteers connect in organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.
They told me I could bring my wife and kids and they paid the expenses. We were picked up in a limo and stayed in a nice hotel. Then we spent the entire day at the place where they taped the show, waiting to be called on. I was the very last.
By that time I'd learned that they were recognizing people who had won, or earned, a million dollars during the year, so I had some anticipation building.
When I was brought to the stage, they took me to the stands and said "sit here, and when Montell calls your name, stand up." So, the commercial ended and the show started again, and Montell said the were recognizing people doing good in the world. He walked toward me, and said "Daniel Bassill, please stand."
As he was headed toward me I saw a man and women walking behind him, carrying what looked like a big check. Montell asked what I do and I had about 20 seconds to respond, when he said, these folks have something for you.
What they had was the 1999 Publishers Clearing House Good as Gold Award, and a $10,000 check. Not $1 million, but really nice.
I learned later that I had been nominated for this award by the Giraffe Foundation who had named me a Giraffe Hero in 1997.
The check was made payable to me and I asked them to change it, and make it payable to Cabrini Connections, since it was through that organization that I was doing the work I was doing, and they really needed the money.
This was prior to the 2000-2001 dot.com sector meltdown and 9/11 which led to a three year drop in stock market values. That was followed by the war in Iraq, and the financial sector meltdown that began in 2007 and 2008, which led to another stock market meltdown. I was hurt bad in both of these downturns, and did not realize in 1999 how much I'd need $10,000 in 2017.
Thus, as we head into the holidays, I hope some of you will support my work as a birthday gift (click here) and others will support it as an investment in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (click here). In both cases you help me continue to do the work described in the blog articles I've written over the past year, and the 11 years before that...and the 30 years before that!
Thank you to all who have helped or let me be part of their lives. As I head into the Thanksgiving weekend I am thankful to all who have allowed me to be part of their lives, via the tutor/mentor programs I've led, and the work of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. And I'm thankful to those like the Giraffe Foundation who recognize my role and ask others to give me their support.
I wrote this article in 2006 and thought I'd update it today.
In October 2006, I received the following email from the Giraffe Foundation:
A Second Giraffe Wins Nobel Peace Prize There was much jubilation here at the news last week that Muhammad Yunus(www.grameenfoundation.org ) had won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006. Yunus was commended as a Giraffe way back in 1987. He follows Giraffe Wangari Maathai (www.greenbeltmovement.org) , who was commended as a Giraffe in 1990 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. We happily suggest that the Nobel Committee check our files now for potential future winners.
What's the connection? Daniel F. Bassill (that's me), founder and president of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), was commended as a Giraffe in 1997. I've been proud to wear the Giraffe pin on my coat for almost a decade.
I keep telling people that we can earn awards like this, if they will join me in the efforts of the T/MC. Over the past couple of days, I've been talking to Phil Cubeta at GIFT HUB and Sean Stannard-Stockton at tacticalphilanthropy.com about ways generous acts of kindness can add up as strategic, long-term support of non profits working to help kids grow from first grade to first job, or working to help solve other long-term challenges.
My goal is to use maps, databases, the Internet, and social networking/collaboration tools to draw donors and volunteers to maps where they see where the need for charity dollars, or volunteers is, and choose among many agencies to decide who to help, and how much to help. By using information as a middle man in this process, we can improve the distribution of support to all places where help is needed, and sustain it for the many years it takes for organizations to grow from good to great.
If we can make this work, I think it deserves a Nobel Prize.
While I've not received a Nobel Prize or MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, here's a list of recognition I have received.
That's what I wrote in 2006. Much has change since then in my ability to do this work, yet my vision is the same.
A few years ago I created this graphic to show the obstacles that have contributed to my inability to fully develop my vision for using maps and building a community of support for well-organized, non-school, tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in all high poverty areas.
You can see several dips on this time line. The 2008 financial sector melt-down ultimately caused me to separate from the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program and form the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to continue doing this work.
I continue to believe that there are people in the world who would support my work, partially fueled by stories of multi-million dollar donations to local universities. In 2008 I wrote this article, following news of a $300 million donation to the University of Chicago by an alum.
In my article I made this observation:
I read in today's Chicago Tribune Business Section that now that the University has the donation, "the hard part" is to figure out how to use that $300 million donation. Not for me.
This week I'm reading about another huge donation to the University of Chicago. That tells me the money is out there.
I keep sharing this graphic, which illustrates how people who read my blogs could be passing on what they read to people in their own network, via social media, traditional media, phone and email and plain old fashion one-on-one conversations.
Using the six degrees of separation rule, that means that the people they know, who also share this information, will ultimately reach someone with very deep pockets who is interested in investing in the Tutor/Mentor Connection and completely upgrading it for the next 20 years.
Maybe he/she will win the Nobel Prize as a result.
I created this graphic several years ago to show how the ideas of one person, or a small group, could spread throughout the world, as a result of a consistent effort to share ideas and expand the network. You can see the graphic in this presentation.
So, yes. One person, or a small group, can change the world. But it's really, really difficult.
I've been trying to apply these ideas in Chicago for over 40 years. Initially my focus was the tutor/mentor program at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago, which I began to lead in 1975 when the program was starting the school year with about 100 pairs of employee volunteers and 2nd-6th grade elementary school kids. By recruiting other volunteers to share leadership and organizational roles with me, and applying mass communications strategies learned in my advertising work, the program grew to 300 pairs of kids/volunteers by 1990, with less than 24 hours a week of part time college student staff. We were changing the world for the kids who participated. That program still operates. It's called Tutoring Chicago now.
During the 1970s and 1980s I began to draw leaders of other programs together to share ideas that helped me in my own program, but also helped them in their programs. Through my work at Wards I was learning how a small group at the corporate office could support the activities of 400 stores in 40 states reaching millions of potential customers. I began to understand that the work of a single program could have a positive impact on a few kids, but well organized, mentor-rich programs, were needed in every poverty neighborhood of Chicago, where more than 200,000 kids lived.
I also began to see that while we were serving 2nd to 6th grade kids, there was a need for programs that helped these kids move through high school and into college and work. Furthermore, while volunteers could provide tutoring and mentoring support, parents, youth, schools and communities often needed other support such as health care, jobs, transportation assistance, which was more than we could provide in our single program.
In late 1992, no one had a master database of tutor/mentor programs serving Chicago, thus no one could organize and lead an on-going effort to help each program be great (which was the store support goal of the Montgomery Ward Corporation), so when the opportunity presented itself in late 1992, I and six other volunteers formed Cabrini Connections to serve 7th to 12th grade youth, and we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) to help programs grow throughout the Chicago region. That started with building a master database of tutor/mentor programs, launched in 1994. This 4-part strategy presentation and this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation are two of many similar presentations that show the work I've been trying to do. I'm still leading the T/MC strategy 23 years later, but through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC structure.
There have been many, many challenges to helping tutor/mentor programs grow in all poverty areas of Chicago. One is that new organizations keep emerging to do similar work, or to segment the market, both locally and nationally. That would be fine if they were also applying the same thinking and network building strategies, but just by looking at web sites, it's difficult to see that happening.
This concept map shows organizations who are intermediaries, focused on the well-being of youth in the Chicago region. They support multiple organizations doing similar work, such as arts, technology, STEM, etc. They are not direct service organizations themselves. Click on the link at the bottom of each node and you go to that organization's web site. Look for maps, visualizations of a birth-to-work thinking. Look at the resource section and see if there are links to the T/MC or the other organizations on this map.
While I've been creating maps and visualizations for many years and writing this blog since 2005, too few people have actually seen these ideas. Many of my visualizations are out of date. I'm constantly updating the concept map showing intermediaries, and my other maps. I have less help today, than I did prior to 2011. And had far too little help before then.
I started creating videos in 2010, using a screen capture feature that I learned from a lady in England. However, after leaving Cabrini Connections in 2011, these all need to be updated, just to provide new contact information.
In the past couple of years I've been gathering new ideas from educators I've met via a Connected Learning #clmooc network. One idea was the use of Vialogues to post and annotate videos. Last week I decided to post my videos, and use the annotation to provide updates. Below is one.
This video is relevant because we're nearing the conclusion of National Mentoring Month. While there have been hundreds of social media posts recognizing volunteers and showing the impact of mentoring, I've not seen many (any?) showing strategies intended to expand what volunteers do to help youth move from poverty to careers, or to help programs constantly improve, or grow in more places.
This has always been needed, and important. However, as we head into a new era of government that may have less interest in helping the disadvantaged in America, it's even more important that volunteer-based organizations learn to influence what their volunteers will do to help keep America Great, or make it as great as it should have been since its founding.
That means more programs need to be creating and sharing videos like this, to show their own theory of change and strategy. More need to be creating concept maps to show who else focuses on similar goals. More need to be following each other's blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, etc. It also means business, universities, foundations, etc. need to encourage, recognize and provide talent and dollars to support this work in hundreds of locations.
If you are doing videos or maps to show these strategies, please share with me on social media, or via the comments section. If you'd like to help me, or discuss these ideas, I'd be happy to connect.
I'm looking at my Twitter feed and seeing a flow of inspirational Tweets related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and service to those in need.
I've been writing articles to encourage people to become involved in helping kids living in high poverty neighborhoods move through school and into adult lives free of poverty since starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. I started writing this blog in 2005 and if you look at January articles every year since then, you'll find articles that mirror these same thoughts, over, and over, again. Here's my January 2006 article.
Here's me at an event where I am showing a 1994 Chicago Tribune article, where the map shows poverty neighborhoods in the city, and the headline says "240,000 city kids at risk".
While we've made many gains, this nation and the world still have too many youth and families living lives with too much "inequality and lack of opportunity". View maps shown here and in the MappingforJustice blog that point to where these places are.
I've used maps over and over to repeat this message and to motivate people to become involved in building and sustaining mentor-rich non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs for k-12 kids in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago, its suburbs, and other cities and states.
In many articles I use visualizations like the one above, which was created by a student intern, and the one below, to illustrate a program design, with volunteers from many work backgrounds connecting in an on-going effort. In the 1990s I tried branding this type of program as "Total Quality Mentoring (TQM)" since it borrows from business practices of constant learning and constant improvement.
I have created a variety of power point presentations to communicate these ideas. This presentation illustrates the idea of Total Quality Mentoring. I keep looking for other youth serving organizations to show their program design and theory of change using maps and visualizations like this. If you know of any who do this well, please share a link in the comment section below.
As you do your service today, or on January 20th, when one organization is encouraging another day of service, look for ways you can use your time, talent and dollars to help others get involved in deeper learning, on-going actions and many places.
In 50 years let's show even more progress in the US and around the world than we have achieved in the past 50 years.
Millions of people will be watching the new super hero Avengers movie this month. I wish just a fraction of that were engaged in deeper learning on ways to reduce poverty and inequality in this country and around the world. Here's an article I wrote in 2012 when the last episode in this series was released.
I received a link today to a story showing how the ‘Humans of New York’ blog raises over $350K to send New York inner-city kids to Harvard" This was sent by Timothy A. Cavell, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas via the mentoring listserv hosted by David DuBois at UIC in Chicago.
I've used the graphic above for several years to illustrate how individuals and organizations could be raising money from people they know to support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in different parts of Chicago (or other cities). This article illustrate's what's possible. I hope thousands of creative people read the article and seek to take a similar role. I've pointed to the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program in Chicago since 1994 because they've been raising money from lawyers and friends to fund tutor/mentor programs. Perhaps by looking at this example some lawyers in the city might be inspired to higher levels of giving and/or fund raising.
By sharing this article on my blog, I'm creating an archive. I can come back to this story over and over to show what is possible if creative people simply decide they want to help youth, by helping tutor/mentor programs grow. Perhaps someone else will say, he can raise even more than $350k. Great.
In the article below I illustrate the potential result from aggregating examples of the good things people do to support inner city youth and organized tutor/mentor programs that serve these youth and connect them to volunteers from many different backgrounds. Some could even be people who raise money to send them to college. Others might raise money to pay the operating costs of the programs that connect kids and volunteers.
I've been building a web library for nearly 20 years. This link goes to a page that shows the four sections of the library and this link goes to one of many articles that describes what's in the library.
In my own efforts, I'm not looking for examples of people who raise money for a program they are part of, sitting on a board or being a volunteer, although those examples should be celebrated. I'm looking for examples of people who are not directly connected to a single program, but recognize the need for funding, and innovate ways to raise money, or mobilize volunteers, to support multiple programs throughout a big city like Chicago. Just raising money for highly visible programs is not going to help smaller less visible programs in different neighborhoods get the operating funds each needs to grow to become great and well recognized programs.
I'm always been just a small organization, and since 2011 I've operated alone, so collecting and organizing all that needs to be collected and organized is far beyond my capacity. However I have a vision for what should be collected, and ideas of how youth from many places could be contributing to the library, and helping people find and use what the library contains. Contact me at tutormentorteam on Twitter or email me at tutormentor2 at earthlink dot net if you'd like to pick my brain or even take future ownership of my own library.
If you have stories to share showing the good things people are doing, please post links in the comment box below.
It's National Mentoring Month, so at the left is a photo of myself and Leo Hall, who I first connected with as his mentor, in 1973. He celebrated his 50th birthday last August, and invited me to the celebration. He wanted to thank me for my influence in his life. While I was there, I thanked him for letting me have a part of his life, and of thousands of other young people and adult since then.
If you've followed my blog, and the Mapping for Justice blog, you've seen that I've followed media stories of violence and poorly performing schools in Chicago with efforts to influence how leaders and volunteers support the on-going operations of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities.
I've pointed out, with articles like this, that the problems we face in 2015 are the same ones we've faced since 1990 and earlier.
I've pointed out the lack of long-term focus from media, philanthropy, business and media in many past articles. My friend Steve Sewall, has written a long article describing this problem, and a proposed solution. I hope you'll read it.
What's missing in Steve's recommendation is a "call to action" that works like retail advertising to draw readers directly to information directories and maps that they can use to find tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities to whom they can offer on-going talent, ideas, operating dollars, and other forms of support.
I've had interns working with me since 2006, who create visualizations and blog articles that help others understand the ideas I've been sharing. This morning I talked with my current intern about the role of "influence building" that leaders need to engage in daily if they want their agenda's to have the public support they need.
This graphic is one of many that shows the role of intermediaries, or third party actors who are committed to solving a particular problem. Every time you encourage someone you know to look at one of my articles, maps, graphics, etc. you are expanding the network of people who support youth in well organized, constantly improving, tutor/mentor and learning programs. You are part of the solution.
When I launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I recognized that long-term problem solving, such as helping youth from birth to work could never succeed as initiatives led by elected officials. No matter how well designed a project is, elected leaders keep changing. Thus, the consistent, long-term support I've always sought had to come from investors/partners who understand the strategy I was proposing and were willing to support it, as their own commitment, for one or two decades.
I've not found that support, yet I've found enough to still be sharing this idea more than 20 years after launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection with the help of six other volunteers who were also launching the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program in Chicago at the same time.
Visit this page and see how interns have communicated these ideas. Youth in schools, non-school programs, colleges and faith groups could take this role, pointing to tutor/mentor programs in their own city or neighborhood, with a shared goal of building the on-going flow of resources needed to reach youth with high quality programs that help them move from birth to work.
I attended the Chicago Hive five year celebration last night and heard CEO Sam Dyson say something like, "If you're serious about helping kids you need to be serious about mobilizing the resources needed."
Earlier in the day Dan Pallotta sent me an email asking me to look at a Boston Globearticle showing his efforts to revolutionize how philanthropic organizations are funded. I've written about Dan's work before and adopted this to my own vision. See article.
The day before I attended a Generation ALL Chicago event, where leaders talked about mobilizing stakeholders from all parts of Chicago to focus on building great public high schools in every neighborhood of Chicago.
Then this morning I responded to a consultant who coaches businesses on volunteer engagement, with an email showing my own "dream". I finished by saying since this is the day everyone's honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it's appropriate that I share my own vision and dream: Here's what I wrote:
---------------------------------------- The recent outrage about unequal coverage of the tragedy in Nigeria vs the tragedy in Paris show how difficult it it to attract people (and donor) attention and keep it focused for any length of time on places where help must be consistently provided.
I've maintained a newspaper clip file going back into the 1970s with articles on education, poverty, race and violence in Chicago. I'm digitizing those articles over the coming year and as I do I'm finding article calling for action from the 1990s to solve problems we still have not solved 20 years later.
In my blog articles and on-line networking I'm looking for people who express a passion for solving this problem, and who are willing to work with me to find others, and to innovate actions, that can create a reach and daily frequency of messages that draw support to non profits and social entrepreneurs the same way business draws customers to their stories, on-line market place and products and services.
I reach out to you because you express some of the same ideas, and in the "food chain" you're closer to the business leaders who need to use their own communications tools to carry this message to the public.
I think I'm older than you, but I think we both have grey hair. I want to leave something in place when I die that I think builds a better future for my grand kids and other people's grand kids. It take money to do this, but even more it takes a shared effort of people who have talents and networks that I don't have.
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In another email conversation I shared my vision of having "Tutor/Mentor Connection student-led teams form on college and high school campuses throughout Chicago and in other cities. Here's what I wrote:
I encourage you to browse the articles by interns, at this page.
Each of these interns has spent time learning what the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy is, then communicating it via blog articles, visualizations and videos. If formal "tutor/mentor connection" teams formed on campuses and schools, their first role would be to learn what I'm trying to do, so they can see their role of duplicating everything I do, but focused on a smaller geographic region (around a college or high school) or focused on a specific network of people, such as students, faculty, alumni of a college.
In short, they learn to connect people they know to information those people can use to support places in their neighborhood which are trying to help kids move through school and into careers, via tutoring, mentoring, social/emotional support, jobs training, and a wide range of other activities.
As student teams form, and learn to do this work, they become organizers of networking events on their campus, and at citywide and national events, that connect groups from one campus with groups from other campuses. The Tutor/Mentor Conferences, are just two events out of a 365 day calendar when people could be gathering to share ideas and inspire actions.
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I also shared an idea with one of the other organizations building networks of people to focus on violence in Chicago. I wrote:
Your organization is already using its blog to share ideas and spotlight people it works with, and you're using your events to bring people together. I encourage you to read this article, and dozens like it that I've posted since 2005.
These talk about what it takes to build and sustain great programs in all high poverty neighborhoods. They call on readers to be volunteers, donors, leaders, etc. and to reach out and get more people involved...in programs all over the city, which are represented in databases like the one I maintain at https://www.tutormentorexchange.net/chicago-area-program-links
I think your organization and others, such as Chicago Hive, and Generation All, etc., could write similar stories, even better than I do, and with the ability to reach people who I don't reach.
This is not something you or I need to have an agreement to do, but it is something I'd be happy to talk with you and brainstorm ways others might take on the same role so more voices are out there every day calling on resource providers, volunteers and other needed talent to become strategically involved in supporting programs all over the region.
As I learn about intermediary organizations in Chicago I've been adding them to this concept map. Click here to see the live version, where you can click on nodes to find web sites for each group.
One role that Tutor/Mentor Teams on campuses would have is to create a map showing organizations and assets in their neighborhood who should know each other and be working together to support youth as they move SAFELY from birth to work. Such maps could be shared on web sites just the way I do, to help each group connect with each other, and to draw donor support to all of the intermediaries on an on-going basis. Generation ALL's leader talked of a 10+ year vision. For that to be achieved, consistent funding needs to be secured.
However, just funding the backbone is not enough. Each of the organizations these intermediaries support also require consistent flows of talent, dollars, ideas, etc. If someone hosts a map of participating organizations, I want to see consistent messages calling on visitors to their web site to go through the map, find an organization, and become a supporter. I point to this list of Chicago non-school tutoring/mentoring organizations all the time and from most of my web sites.
So much for today's soap box. I guess on ML King, Jr's anniversary it's fair for me to share my own "dream".
These were just two of numerous stories generated by the quilt. In Huppke's article he writes "Each year, as the grim tally comes in, I think: "Surely this will be the year Chicagoans say, 'No more.' Nowhere can this level of violence be deemed acceptable." And yet little seems to change."
Making something change requires a consistent effort to draw people together to make something happen. This being Easter weekend, it's a good time to think of how many years Christians have been "drawing people together" to support their beliefs. I wrote about this at the start of the week.
The media have been telling stories of violence, poverty and poorly performing schools in Chicago for more than 30 years, with some of these stories getting occasional front page attention and editorial "rage". Yet seldom do these stories point to all of the places where poverty contributes to these problems, or to the different social purpose organizations, such as volunteer based tutor/mentor programs, that are working in these neighborhoods to help kids have extra support and learning opportunities that might help them move through school and into jobs out of poverty.
Thus, my strategy has been to create "Rest of the Story" articles, using maps to point to where the news story took place, and writing stories that encouraged readers to seek out places where they could offer time, talent and dollars to help neighborhoods have a full range of learning, mentoring and job opportunities. This is one of those stories. This gallery shows more.
When I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 one of the core strategies was to create more frequent media stories that would draw attention and needed resources directly to tutor/mentor programs in all poverty neighborhoods. This article showed that strategy. It's from 1994.
You can see this and more stories resulting from my efforts at this link.
Unfortunately, I started doing this prior to having the Internet and social media as a tool so my efforts were too little, reaching too few, and never have gained the support of higher profile leaders in media, business, politics, religion or support. Yet I keep trying.
It took 300 years before the Christian faith was firmly established in the Old World. I've only been at this for 20 years.
How do we expand this effort and build more consistent attention, greater involvement, and a better flow and distribution of needed resources? The violence quilt is an example of what's possible. However, this effort needs to focus in on individual neighborhoods, and needs to generate media, or social media, attention every day.
In February I wrote this article following this shooting in Rodgers Park. In it I suggested that youth in local high schools, non school programs and faith groups could become the journalist who keep this issue in front of the public on a regular basis, and who use maps like the ones I've created to show who the adult leaders are in the community who should be providing talent, technology, dollars and space for needed non-school tutoring/mentoring, learning and skill development programs in every neighborhood where too many stories of violence and lost opportunities appear.
I included this map in the February story, and I've updated it to show last week's shooting. Visit this page of the Chicago Tribune site and you can see other homicides in this part of Chicago. This article has maps of every community area of Chicago, showing how many high poverty youth between age 6 and 17 live in the area.
In every church celebrating Easter this weekend, and every synagogue celebrating Passover, someone will pass a collecting plate asking for donations. We don't just need stories about bad news. We need stories that ask for donations of time, talent and dollars to support youth serving and jobs programs in every neighborhood where kids need extra help.
Anyone can create these stories. They can probably write more effectively than I can. They can post stories on a wide range of social media sites, and create more emotional connection with readers than I can.
Do it. Do it every day. Keep doing it for an entire year, or a decade. Do it until all of the leaders in the community, and those in the wider Chicago region, are actively involved making high quality, constantly improving programs available to youth in every high poverty neighborhood.
Use the maps as a planning tool, and an accountability tool.
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.
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."
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.
I received this message today on Facebook from Leo Hall, who I first met in 1973 when I became a volunteer mentor at the Montgomery Ward-Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program in Chicago:
"Happy Fathers Day to my long time friend and tutor, Daniel F. Bassill. It's been over 40 years and I appreciate what you've done for me over all of those years. Thank you forever."
We've stayed connected for this long because I've stayed involved in the tutoring program for that long. In the articles on this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site my goal is to help mentoring/tutoring organizations build the structure and leadership that enables many volunteers to build and sustain life-long connections that benefit both the youth and the adults, as well as everyone who support such programs.
While we held a Tutor/Mentor Conference last week in Chicago to share ideas, expand networks, and celebrate the work done over the past year, the goal is that we begin to focus efforts on activities that will help recruit more volunteers to support tutor/mentor programs throughout the Chicago region (and other cities) as school starts in August/September and that we will work to help those volunteers grow their involvement over the following 9 months.
During the June 7 conference Maxine Williams and Samuel Carter, a coordinator and mentee from the FunDay School in Chicago told their story to the conference participants. In the audience were Sam's Father, and Sam's Mentor, who was given recognition by Sam for all the ways he had helped Sam get through school and into college. You can read Maxine's comments here.
Every three months there is can be an event and activity that supports the growth of tutor/mentor programs in more places throughout Chicago. Every day there is a library of information and ideas that volunteers, students, leaders, donors and policy makers can look at to find more ways they can be proactive in supporting these programs.
Every Father's Day there ought to be thousands of young people giving messages of thanks like Leo has given me and that Sam gave to his mentor at the last conference.
We need leaders from many sectors to support the events and the different tutor/mentor programs in their communities. If you are one of those leaders and want to connect with me and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, just introduce yourself on Facebook, Linked in, or Twitter, or join my forum on Ning.
I apologize for another long post. However, I’m trying to tie several streams of thought together. I hope you’ll follow and add your own thinking.
Last Sunday I read an article in the Chicago Tribune titled “Pope wants more focus on poor.” I’ve been working on a story about this all week.
Then today I saw this TED talk, where Bono talks about data and facts and ending extreme poverty.
If you’ve not been totally absorbed on your NCAA Basketball Brackets, you’ve probably read about the new Pope and his commitment to “walking the talk” when it comes to setting an example for other Catholics and people of faith.
While most people probably have read or listened to something about the new Pope, I suspect most have not been having a soul searching discussion about philanthropy and how the system of charitable giving does too little to support social sector organizations serving the poor and addressing complex environmental, social and health problems that plague the world.
I posted an article a couple of weeks ago about Dan Pallotta’s TED talk, titled The way we think about charity is dead wrong. That TED talk has stimulated a number of discussions on social media space. I’m part of three on Linked in, such as this one.
In one Linkedin post the writer compared the challenges of changing how charities are supported to the challenges facing the new Pope, saying:
Bono’s TED talk describes the 3000 year old fight against poverty. He’s fighting the same fight as the POPE, but on a different battlefield. It’s the same fight Pallotta is fighting. It’s the same one I’ve been fighting for nearly 20 years.
When BONO talks about using data he does not mention the most important asset he offers to the war on poverty, which is his own celebrity visibility. He’s been blessed with the ability to draw the attention of millions of people, wealthy and poor. When Pallotta talks about lack of advertising available to social sector organizations, he is describing how so few organizations have the celebrity power of Bono, or the POPE, to attract and educate donors and keep them focused on their work for dozens of years.
When BONO talks about using data he uses charts and graphs. I want to see him using , geographic maps, showing at the zip code level where extreme poverty, or extreme gaps between rich an poor, are most concentrated. I’ve used maps in many articles to propose a marketing strategy that engages people from every Catholic Church in the Chicago region in on-going efforts that help existing volunteer based tutor/mentor programs get the talent, technology, operating dollars and ideas each needs to constantly improve what they do to connect youth and volunteers and transform the lives of both.
In addition, when BONO talks of using data, I hope that the collection of data, and responses to BONO’s outreach, will lead to web sites that visually map all of the issues that contribute to extreme poverty, or extreme disenfranchisement. The pie chart shown on this Glasgow site is one example of how this might be done.
The Internet has created the ability to mine data from all over the world, and for teams of design and visualization engineers to create concept maps, like the one above, that shows the range of age-appropriate supports kids need as they move from birth, through elementary school, high school, post high school and into jobs.
Similar maps could show how fighting disease in a poverty area also needs to be combined with concurrent efforts to fight corruption, improve education and technology access, and create jobs. If you’re building a skyscraper, every page of the blueprint show skills needed to complete the work described on that page. Everyone needs to be paid and have the highest level of skills. If we think of ending poverty as we do of building a new hotel, what are all the skills needed at different stages of the project?
Maps like this can be interactive, animated, three-dimensional, and connected to data libraries that a) include research that provides a better understanding of the problem, and potential solutions; and b) links to web sites of organizations in different places that are working to provide a solution, but work with limited resources in many cases.
This is where both Bono, the POPE and Pallotta’s TED talks intersect. Bono and the POPE provides celebrity power that is far greater than what Dan Pallotta or most of the rest of us in the social services sector, can generate. While Pallotta’s TED talk has received over 1 million hits, stimulating discussions in many places, how will this be sustained, expanded, then turned into actions that improve the flow of resources to thousands of places?
Who is talking about this?
Bono talks about ending poverty by 2028, and talks about the inertia that might prevent this, or the momentum that might make it a reality. The articles about Pope Francis show that efforts have been made to reform the Catholic Church for centuries, with little success.
If Bono and the Pope and other leaders were to build map-based data bases, and concept maps, that work like blueprints to show work that needs to be done in many places on an on-going basis, they could draw more consistent attention to the problems with philanthropy that Pallotta describes.
As I’ve written these articles I feel that I have three mountains of obstacles to overcome.
1) Donors, businesses, public leaders and individuals are already doing a lot to try to help youth and families living in poverty. Thus, asking them to do more, which is what the POPE is asking, meets a lot of resistance.
Pallotta’s message is that unless we find ways to draw more resources into social sector organizations, so they can innovate, hire and retain the best talent, experiment and even make mistakes that they learn from so they can get better at what they do, we’ll continue to not achieve our long-term goals of helping kids born in poverty live adult lives out of poverty because of the help they have received from birth to work.
2) If you’re already a secure, well funded non profit, who is challenging you to do more than what you are doing? If no one is advertising, or trying to educate the public so they can look at an organization's web site and make a judgment as to whether or not the organization deserves financial support, how can we move beyond superficial measures, such as money spent on "overhead"? If no one is aggregating information and web links pointing to organizations doing similar work, how can you benchmark yourself against what others are doing, to see where you can improve? What’s your motivation if your donor base is constantly giving you money because of your history and reputation, or the names of the people on your Board of Directors?
3) If we don’t map where the need is for social services, and where existing services are located, with information that maps categories of organizations serving similar population, we won’t know if the money we are spending is reaching all of the people who need that help. We could fill every NCAA Tournament Basketball stadium with fans, or fill a football stadium for a visit by the Pope, and still not have people from every poverty neighborhood represented.
This graphic shows the role of intermediaries who connect people who can help (volunteers, donors, idea generators, etc.) to organizations in places where help is needed. If the Pope, Bono, Pallotta and thousands of others use their daily visibility to draw people to information that shows where and why they are needed, and motivates them to give time, dollars, talent, etc. they can continue the momentum Bono describes and provide the advertising support and resource flow that Pallotta describes, to all of the places where the poor live in need of extra help.
I’ve posted articles like this on my blog and web site for 15 years with the goal that someone in the Vatican, Bono’s team, the Mayor’s office, etc. would read them and bring them to the attention of these leaders, so they can add the ideas into their own leadership efforts.
As I build a library of content on sites I host, I point to sites with additional ideas. Over the past few years I've written more about network building, learning and point to virtual events such as the Education, Technology and Media MOOC, ETMOOC which demonstrate how thousands of people could be connecting, sharing ideas and innovating ways to reach people in high poverty with resources that aid youth and families in overcoming the challenges they face.
I won’t be alive in 2028 to see if Bono's dream comes true, but these ideas can be if you read, reflect and share them with others.
How to use this blog: Each article includes graphics. Click on them to get enlarged versions. Each article has many links (which are often broken on older articles). Open the links to dig deeper in the ideas and strategies I share. On the left side are tags which you can click to find articles that focus on the same topic.
Note: the PO Box address shown w many graphics no longer is active.
Learn more about me at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/dan-bassill.
I combine 17 years of retail advertising, 3 years in Army Intelligence and 40 years of leading site-based tutor/mentor programs, the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Few people in the US have a similar depth of involvement and experiences.
I describe my work as information-based problem solving and host a library of my own ideas plus links to more than 2000 other sites which people can use to build and sustain volunteer-based non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs in high poverty areas.
You meet me in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or other links shown below.
I put this 1993 Chicago SunTimes story in an article I wrote in April 2015. I've highlighted the opening and closing sections to show the problems that were keeping big solutions to poverty from forming in the 1970s and 80s, were the same keeping them from forming in the 1990s and 2000s. Too many people want to do their own thing. Too many are reinventing the wheel. Too little commitment to long-term solutions. Too many with "not invented here" attitudes.
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