Focus part of your attention on kids in high poverty areas

The last few months have dramatically changed the focus of most Americans, as the new administration in Washington, DC is rapidly dismantling the Federal government and the many services and protections it offers, while also destroying long-term alliances with foreign governments.  Most of my social media is dominated with this issue.

Yet, 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 20 years ago. They demonstrate that the problems we face now are deeply rooted, and still need solutions. 

Helping kids to careers

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.

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.

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.

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 help 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.

T/MC map created in 2008

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.

Long-term; many places

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 2017 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".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my collection of visual essays.

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.

Moving into spring 2025 the challenges are much greater.  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.

You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND T/MI page and add your support.  Thank you.

Creating Economic Justice - Opportunity for All

The last few months have dramatically highlighted the racial and class inequalities in America. We're seeing changes that we might not have expected in a hundred years, like removing statues of Confederate generals and Christopher Columbus, renaming military bases and generating significant discussions of police reform and transferring funds from traditional policing to social services. 

In this section of the Tutor/Mentor library I post links to sites like Black Lives Matter, How We Rise, and the Poor People's Campaign, where you can learn about these issues and see actions and policy changes that different organizations are recommending.

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on is related to economic justice. If we help kids born or living in high poverty 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, we do much to create economic justice. 

I've created a library of concept maps 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 the 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.

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 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.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. 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 I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.

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.

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 help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

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.

T/MC map created in 2008

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.

Long-term; many places

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.  A few days ago I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?"

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 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my collection of visual essays.

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.

Moving into fall 2020.  There are many who hope that the Covid19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests will be a major tipping point and that finally, significant change will happen. There are many others, including myself, who fear that in a few months, or a year, a new issue will arise that captures public attention, and this push for equal justice, opportunity and an end to racism will be pushed into the background.

Added to these concerns is the question of how well programs who shut down face-to-face activities in March will be able to re-start in the fall, or whenever lock-down restrictions are lifted. 

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.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me. You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you.

Helping Youth Through School - Requires Long Term Thinking

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 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.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. 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 I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network article.

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.

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 help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

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.

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.

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.  A few days ago I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?"

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 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation on SlideShare.

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.

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.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me.

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you. 

Support the work needed to help kids in all Chicago neighborhoods

Thank you to those who have already sent contributions to help me continue the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC work in 2016. 

The graphic shown above has a lot of information. At the top of the pyramid, it shows a goal of helping all kids stay safe, finish school, and head on to college and careers. At the bottom, it shows the need for someone to maintain an information base that others can use to help cities reach the goal. It also shows an active role of connecting those who can help...all of you...directly with organizations in high poverty areas who are working to help kids through school and to stay safe in non-school hours. 

Finally, it plots this over a map of the Chicago region. If cities don't use maps to point resources to ALL, ALL, ALL, of the neighborhoods where help is needed, then very few of those places will receive that help on a consistent basis.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to support the work at the bottom of the pyramid and created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 to continue doing this, even without a non-profit status. 

A few of you have provided year-end contributions to help me do this, but so far too few to do it well....or pay all the bills. Here's a page with a PayPal button. If you want the same ultimate goals, then help support the work needed. http://tutormentorexchange.net/helptmi 

Creating Learning Orgs to Solve Complex Problems

This is a graphic I've used for many years to illustrate work I've been doing. At the top of this pyramid is a goal we all want. At the bottom is information aggregated by myself and others that can be used to support the work of everyone else in achieving this goal.

This is a different version of the graphic. Again, an information library is the base of this pyramid. However, getting more people to find and use this information, helping them understand it, then motivating them to provide time, talent, dollars in one or more places where the problem is concentrated, are three additional steps in a 4-part problem solving strategy I've developed over the past 20 years.

This is a third version, that emphasizes the importance of maps, to assure that resources, and solutions, are supported in every high poverty area of the Chicago region (or other cities of the world). Without using maps you don't know where the problem is, or if solutions and resources are available in all of those places.

These last two graphics also illustrate that connecting people who can help to places where help is needed, is an active, on-going process and a role that needs to be well funded, and shared by many people.

This is a map showing intermediary organizations focusing on the well-being of youth in the Chicago region. I'd like to see each of them including visualizations like I'm showing here, to illustrate how they are focusing their followers on information they can all use to help youth in Chicago have greater opportunities.

Every city should have a map like this, and institutions like universities, should have maps like this, showing all the people focused on the same problem, but from different perspectives. Youth could be creating such maps. They could also be part of the communications process that shares ideas across networks and encourages people to gather and build relationships. They can be mobilizes of volunteers and donors at key times each year, or create stories following negative news.

I've written dozens of articles since 2005 tagged with "learning". I hope you'll spend time reading, reflecting and sharing these.

I've been sharing these ideas for many years, but have not had any luck at attracting, or retaining, a benefactor who shares the vision and has the money to support the work. If you can help, I'd like to hear from you.

Community Wealth Building, Anchor Institutions, Mentoring

This week I attended a meeting of the Illinois Task Force on Social Innovation and listened to Ted Howard's recommendations for building community wealth in high poverty areas of Illinois. If you've not heard this term, or thought of a neighborhood tutor/mentor program as part of a wealth-building strategy I encourage you to browse the resources at http://www.community-wealth.org and view this infographic describing community wealth-building.

I was particularly interested in Ted's description of the role of anchor institutions, like hospitals, who often are the largest employer in a high poverty neighborhood. Since 2000 I've shared a vision of hospitals being anchor institutions in building tutor/mentor programs in the trade area around a hospital, because of the potential they have to lower the cost of poverty services at the hospital, while also encouraging young people to seek health careers and work in hospitals, thus lowering the costs of employment. Workforce productivity research(here and here)shows that employee volunteer engagement improves workforce productivity, providing more reasons for businesses to become strategically involved in tutor/mentor program growth.

As I listened to Ted's comments, he kept pointing to other organizations as models for community wealth-building. I asked myself, "Does he have a web library with these examples and more?" The next day I visited his web site and found a huge, well-organized library.

A few years ago I created this graphic to show the importance of aggregating information that anyone could use to support the growth of youth support programs that help lead youth through school and into jobs and careers. At the bottom of this pyramid I show the need for someone collecting information showing who's already involved, where they are located, what they do, as well as who provides funds, volunteers, etc. I created this concept map showing intermediary organizations supporting Chicago youth and this library with web links to nearly 175 Chicago area youth serving organizations. These are part of a library with more than 2000 links pointing to research, capacity building, innovation and process improvement ideas.

While this information needs to be constantly managed, it also needs to have an on-going advertising/outreach effort to increase the number of people who find and use the information, along with an on-going facilitation process to help people understand and apply the various ideas so that more people are strategically involved in helping to build and sustain birth-to-work youth serving organizations in every high poverty neighborhood of the city and suburbs. See 4-Part Strategy Description.

I use maps to show where programs are located, and to identify assets who are part of the neighborhood and who could be anchor organizations that support this process. In articles like this I show how others could create their own maps from the platform I host.

After listening to Ted Howard and visiting his web site, I realized that community wealth building is a parallel process, based on the same need for a knowledge base. I created this pyramid to illustrate the steps in common. I updated the strategic planning PDF that graduate students from DePaul University had created for me in the early 2000s to include a graphic showing that a hospital or other anchor institution could support a Tutor/Mentor Program Development strategy and a community wealth-growing strategy as part of the same set of goals. This graphic shows the two strategies side-by-side and can be copied and used by any community organizer in Chicago or beyond who wants to engage hospitals, faith groups, universities and/or businesses as partners and lead institutions in this neighborhood focused strategy.

I've been creating graphics to illustrate ideas since the mid 1990s and interns have been helping do this since the mid 2000s. I've created some boards on Pinterest with many of my graphics. Each includes links to a web page or blog where the graphic is used. My hope is that others who are interested in communicating these same ideas will use my graphics in their own articles, or will innovate new versions of the same graphics, that communicate the idea more effectively. If you do use these, just send me a link, and provide an attribution so the people you are connecting with will take a look at more of the ideas and resources in the knowledge base I've been building for more than 20 years.

I'm testing new tools for communicating ideas. Here's the Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection PDF on Flipsnack. I need a sponsor to pay fees for me to use this site.

While all of this information is on the Internet, I host a conference twice a year in Chicago and invite people from my on-line world to connect face to face. The next is June 7 at the Metcalfe Federal Building. You can see the agenda and registration information here. I hope you'll participate if you are in the region.

Creating Networks of Purpose

The graphic at the right illustrates the T/MC role in building a Network of Purpose. This is one of many short essays in the Tutor/Mentor Institute that describe the Tutor/Mentor Connection's role in building a network of purpose.

Notice that we're at the bottom of this pyramid. If you were reading Harvard Business School articles on theory of leadership, you'd see this same example, where the leader of an organization is inspiring and empowering all of the members of the organization to focus on common goals.

Ours is a virtual organization. Less than 5 people work on the T/MC and Cabrini Connections staff. Thus, we're reaching out to people all over the world who have the same concerns for kids living in poverty, or for workforce development and diversity.

The first step in this process is building a database of people who operate tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, or who are in some way involved, or interested. Without this database we cannot send out invitations for people to visit our web sites, or come to our conferences. We also cannot create a Program Locator service that helps volunteers, donors and parents find tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.

The Blog Exchange that we're now hosting is part of an on-going strategy of building the database. The Conference on May 17 and 18 is also part of that strategy. However, it goes to the next step of helping the people in the database begin to know and share ideas with each other.

If we can keep programs coming together often enough, they will beginning to build their own networks and relationships, which can lead to better sharing of ideas, and more willingness to work together to increase resources.

If we do this long enough, and in enough cities, the end result can be what everyone wants, which is kids who do better in school, are better prepared for work, and are better citizens and contributors to our society.

However, we can't do this without the work at the base of the pyramid.