This graphic shows a strategy that I've led since late 1992.
I and six other volunteers created a new volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in late 1992 to support teens who had aged out of the 2nd to 6th grade program at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago. We called that Cabrini Connections. The map shows its location on the Near North side of Chicago.
The map also shows that the area we served was just a small part of the city. We recognized that one more small program would not have much impact on the 200,000+ kids living in high poverty areas of Chicago, so in 1993 we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), to gather and share information and build greater public awareness of EVERY tutor/mentor program in Chicago, not just our own. I've supported the T/MC via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011.
The T/MC is an "information-based problem solving strategy". One part is my lists of Chicago area youth serving programs, which I urge people to point to regularly to draw volunteers and donors to each.
In this section of the Tutor/Mentor library I point to articles like this, focusing on wealth inequality in America, or this blog, which focuses on breaking the cycle of poverty in America. Another article describes "How the racial wealth gap has evolved -- and why it persists". Many articles on this blog focus on these issues. Just open the tabs at the left and scroll through past articles.
Many of the articles in my library are from 10 to 25 years ago. They demonstrate that the problems we face now are deeply rooted, and still need solutions.
The issue I've been focusing on is helping kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs and careers, and support networks, that enable them to live and raise their own children where ever they want. The graphic at the right shows to teens who were part of the tutor/mentor program I led in the 1990s. One is shown at the lower right. She's now Director of Support Services for Housing Opportunities for Women. I'm still connected to both of these teens, and many others, nearly 30 years after we first met.
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| Helping kids to careers |
Today another alum boosted one of my post on Facebook, saying "This program helped shape who I am today and I'm forever grateful."
My goal is that more youth from high poverty areas have similar support systems.
I've created a library of concept maps over the past 20 years that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.
In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.
Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.
This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 25 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid. You can find this graphic in this PDF.
Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic. The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.
At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems. While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved. Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.
That knowledge base is the web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs that I've been building since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago from 1975 to 1992. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago. The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy we created in 1993.
Competing for attention. Drawing users to library. Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing. Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.
Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis. Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.
I find too few conversations that focus on this step. With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this article. With the White House and Federal government now run by an unelected immigrant billionaire and a convicted felon, getting attention on social media for youth development issues is more difficult than ever before, especially when one has no money for advertising (that's me).
I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources. I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.
Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.
Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid. Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning, it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that helps build and sustain high quality youth supports in all the places where they are most needed. I tried to do this through the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I help in Chicago from 1994 to 2015.
In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities. This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.
These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.
Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.
This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, Etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.
It is essential that maps be used to support this process. With a map leaders can focus on all areas of a city where kids need extra help. At the same time, neighborhood groups can focus on their part of the city. Many groups need to be doing this. With a map we can add overlays that show indicators of need, existing youth tutor/mentor and learning resources, and assets (business, hospitals, faith groups, universities, Etc) who could be helping youth programs grow in different areas....because they are also invested in these areas!
I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year. No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas. Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city.
However, if we could solve this problem....
A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed. I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.
This leads to the final graphic.
It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.
However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school! It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.
I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.
I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.
Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem. While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2026 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as they move through school and into adult lives. Read more. Read this article about "building public will".
Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time. If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.
There is a great deal of uncertainty as we move into spring 2027, mostly centered around the November elections. While the nation still deals with a lingering Covid19 pandemic, bird flu, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc., we now face massive layoffs of government workers and drastic reductions of Federal funding of programs that help keep us safe and help those who need extra help get that help. These are just a few of the problems that I see as I scroll my social media feeds each day.
I've created a library of concept maps over the past 20 years that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.
 |
| View Mentoring Kids to Careers cMap |
In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.
Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.
Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic. The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.
That knowledge base is the web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs that I've been building since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago from 1975 to 1992. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago. The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy we created in 1993.
Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis. Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.
I find too few conversations that focus on this step. With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this article. With the White House and Federal government now run by an unelected immigrant billionaire and a convicted felon, getting attention on social media for youth development issues is more difficult than ever before, especially when one has no money for advertising (that's me).
I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources. I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.
Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.
Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid. Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning, it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that helps build and sustain high quality youth supports in all the places where they are most needed. I tried to do this through the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I help in Chicago from 1994 to 2015.
In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities. This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.
These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.
This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, Etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.
 |
| T/MC map created in 2008 |
I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year. No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas. Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city.
However, if we could solve this problem....
This leads to the final graphic.
However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school! It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.
 |
| Long-term; many places |
I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.
Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem. While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2026 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as they move through school and into adult lives. Read more. Read this article about "building public will".
Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time. If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.
There is a great deal of uncertainty as we move into spring 2027, mostly centered around the November elections. While the nation still deals with a lingering Covid19 pandemic, bird flu, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc., we now face massive layoffs of government workers and drastic reductions of Federal funding of programs that help keep us safe and help those who need extra help get that help. These are just a few of the problems that I see as I scroll my social media feeds each day.
In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users. From 2009 till now, I created lists on Twitter with accounts of many organizations in the Tutor/Mentor library, but very few of these are using social media to connect with each other, or discuss issues I address in articles like this. I'm now trying to build a similar network on BlueSky and Mastodon.
If you're interested in learning more I urge you to read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation. The please read these articles about establishing a Tutor/Mentor Connection at one or more universities.
I invite others to create and share their own versions of my articles, to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-based strategies in your own communities. I'd love to help you while I'm still able.
I invite others to create and share their own versions of my articles, to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-based strategies in your own communities. I'd love to help you while I'm still able.
You can find me on any of these social media platforms. I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.
Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND T/MI page and add your support. Thank you.
| We need everyone's help. |
Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND T/MI page and add your support. Thank you.
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