Expanding "Who you Know" Networks

National Mentoring Month has just ended and Black History Month starts today.  Last week I watched a panel discussion, hosted by MENTOR Georgia (it's 90 minutes long, so watch it later).  In one segment the speaker talked about mentoring as a strategy to expand networks, or social capital. 

That takes time.  

Below is a graphic that I created several years ago.  I find very few mentoring discussions that use graphics to emphasize the long-term support kids in high poverty, highly segregated, areas need to move from first grade through high school and post high school and into jobs and careers.

If you work your way through it I hope you'll have a better idea, and commitment, to the work that needs to be done in many places.

At the top of the graphic I show an arrow that represents support all kids need, for the first 20-25 years of their lives, to help them through school and then, into and through their adult lives. Some kids, like Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk, had much greater support propelling them to career success. Those are extreme examples, but most kids have a large natural network of support than kids in high poverty areas. 

That arrow comes from this "mentoring kids to careers" graphic, which I created in the late 1990s.  It shows first grade through 12th grade, then college or vocational training, as a series of steps. At each step kids need a variety of different supports and/or are influenced by people who work in occupations that youth might aspire to in their own futures.  If you open this concept map, you'll see a different version of this timeline.

As I said above, all kids need some of these supports and influences.  However, if you read many of the articles in this section of my library, you'll see plenty of evidence showing that kids living in high poverty areas don't have as many naturally occurring supports or career models as do kids in more affluent areas. That means someone, or many people, need to help make these supports available and keep them in place for 12 or more years.

This leads to the next element on the graphic, which are the maps.  

I've been using maps since 1993 to visually show areas of Chicago with high concentrations of poverty and many indicators showing kids and families need more help.  Without a map you could have a long list of places you're helping, but still be missing a large number of other places that need the same help.

You can find the maps shown above in this 2016 article. You can find hundreds of articles on this blog, and the MappingforJustice blog, showing similar maps and encouraging leaders to use them to guide resources into all of these areas for many years. 

The map graphic I've used is a mashup of maps from three sources.  In this concept map you can find many data platforms that could be used to create similar map stories. 

Why don't we see leaders using maps to show the growth of youth and family support programs in every high poverty area of the  USA?

Since starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011, my focus has been on helping long-term, volunteer-based tutor and/or mentor programs grow in all high poverty areas as a way of expanding the networks of support available to kids, helping them through school and beyond. 

Thus, the arrow, or timeline, indicates multiple years of support. The map illustrates that many places need the same type of support for many years.

The graphic below visualizes the need for every industry to have strategies that distribute volunteers, technology, dollars and more into every neighborhood...and for school and non-school programs to be places where kids connect with a wider range of learning and career opportunities than might be normally available in their own family and neighborhood. 

While I led a tutor/mentor program from 1975 through 2011, which collected inner city kids to a wide range of workplace adults, I did not start to understand this as a form of bridging social capital until the early 2000s.  

Here's a link to one of the earliest articles that have influenced my thinking about social capital. One introductory paragraph says:

“Social networks that can bridge across geography, race and class are key to success in the new economy”, says Professor Manuel Pastor, Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied social networks in Los Angeles among Latinos. ‘Hard’ skills are essential, but it’s the connections and mentoring that provide information about what skills are necessary and a vision of how acquiring them can lead to new opportunities for all our residents”.

This was written by Bob Pearlman.  The research he points to can be found at this link.  His current website is at this link. 

Since then I've aggregated links to many articles about social capital, which you can find here, and have posted 30+ articles on this blog that focus on social capital.

In this article I point to an earlier influence. It was a book that I read in the mid 1990s, titled American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, by Douglas Massey. This book emphasized how disconnected people living in highly segregated, high poverty, neighborhoods were from the resources that might make lives in those communities better for residents.

MENTOR, the national intermediary, focuses on all types of mentoring, recognizing that every person could benefit from having a mentor at some points in their lives.  But that dilutes the focus needed to reach kids in every high poverty area with organized, on-going programs.

I've used maps showing high poverty areas to help people understand where long-term, organized, volunteer based tutor,  mentor and learning programs are most needed. I encourage MENTOR and others to do the same.

Why non-school programs?

Find the graphic below in this visual essay.  It shows how organized, on-going programs are needed in high poverty areas of big cities, because of how difficult it is for kids and schools in these areas to make such connections and sustain them for many years.  We operated after 5pm because that was when workplace volunteers were more likely to make long-term commitments.

I've used a variety of graphics to visualize how organized programs can create extra learning opportunities by the involvement of volunteers who work in different industries and career fields.  This Total Quality Mentoring visual essay illustrates how such programs could be more available if they were strategically supported by leaders from different sectors.

I created this presentation more than 20 years ago to show why organized tutor/mentor programs are needed in high poverty areas and actions the Tutor/Mentor Connection had piloted since 1993 to help such programs get the attention and resources each needs to constantly improve.   The graphic I've included below visualizes some of the different types of learning, mentoring and tutoring that might take places in a site-based program.

These strategies have been based on the premise that areas of concentrated, high poverty, have too few people working in the wide range of careers that are modeled daily by parents, family and neighbors in more affluent places.  Thus, such programs need to be built in order to expand the social capital for kids in poverty areas.

However....  that does not mean there are "no people" living in high poverty areas who have jobs and careers.   That's the final element included in the graphic above.  Kids and adults need to learn "who you already know" who might be someone who can mentor them and help open doors to opportunity.

The need for social capital literacy is not really a new concept. Bob Pearlman's early 2000s article said, "Networking, or acquiring a social network, is a key skill of the 21st Century. It’s how you learn, and how you connect."  

I show another version of the "hub and spoke" graphics in a presentation titled "virtual corporate office" and in these blog articles.  

This shows how different industries could "distribute" learning and mentoring opportunities to kids in all high poverty areas, via school and non-school programs.  Social capital literacy could be a separate box, or could be a part of the mentoring coming from each industry.

The map reinforces the need for these forms of learning and mentoring in EVERY high poverty neighborhood. The timeline emphasizes the need for such learning to be consistently available for many years.  The other graphics emphasize that businesses in every sector could be supporting organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in multiple locations, not just one or two favored programs. 

Let's look at the timeline arrow once more.  If you click and enlarge it you'll see different types of learning activities that are appropriate for different age levels.

Here's another quote from Bob Pearlman's article:

"But the most significant finding in the study was that a student's social network can have a significant impact on his/her career choice. Students whose parents are both in high-tech careers are more likely to be interested in technology careers themselves. In addition, 83 percent of students rely on personal connections for career-related information and guidance."

I believe that the earlier a young person becomes involved in a well-organized, mentor-rich non-school program, the more benefit that program will have. Stronger bonds will be built with mentors, and with the program itself.  That's important because while a volunteer might leave after a year or longer, the program's ability to provide continuity, and a replacement mentor, helps keep the youth involved.  As a youth moves from middle school to high school the support offered can lead to part time jobs, internships, college access, scholarships and ultimately job and career opportunities. 

Kids in primary school where fundamental learning habits can be reinforced, and career aspirations nurtured, don't yet have the level of maturity needed to actively seek out mentors.  However, by middle school, and early high school, I think most kids would be ready to take more control over their own futures, if there were people helping them.  

We need to make that happen. 

This  has been a long post. Thanks for reading. I hope we connect on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn.

If you want to support my work, please visit this page and use PayPal to send a contribution. 

Building youth networks.

Below is a graphic I created in 1990s to show the range of adults from different backgrounds who were connecting with teens in the Chicago tutor/mentor program that I led from 1993 to 2011.

Note the pre-school through career timeline in the middle of the circle. This shows the multi-year support needed by kids living in high poverty areas, where too few of the people surrounding them work in the wide range of careers that more affluent kids are exposed to.  Note also the circle showing public school above the timeline and the 3pm-5pm and 5pm-8pm circles below the timeline. This shows that the 3-5pm non-school hours are the typical after-school program, needed in all areas where Mom and Dad have full-time jobs and kids need safe places during this time frame.

The 5pm-8pm timeframe is more unique to big cities where workplace volunteers are more able to become tutors and mentors in on-going programs. That was the timeframe when the programs I led operated. 

I did not realize until I read Dr. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone book in the late 1990s that what we were doing was creating bridging social capital for our kids.  Around 2013 Putnam published another book, titled "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis" which I've written about often. 

In my graphic at the top of this article I show a hub and spoke design, where the hub represents a tutor/mentor program, or an individual youth. The spokes represent all the people who could be part of that youth's network, made possible by the family and community she is part of, or by the organized tutor/mentor program she is part of.

But how do we show this?  

At the left is another graphic that I've used for many years. In the mid 2000s I begin to learn about social network analysis, which is a tool for mapping connections between people and showing them in a visualization.  

Here are two articles written in the late 2000s where I introduce social network analysis, and one of it's pioneers, Valdis Krebs.  Click here and here. 

Yesterday I did a web search using the terms "tutor mentor push pull maps".  Below is a screen shot of the images from the top results on that search. Many of the images shown are from this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website. 

I often do searches like this to make sure my web content can be found if people are searching for terms that include "tutor mentor".  In this search I saw that there were some others who were mapping networks.

One was a mentoring network map from Lehigh University. 

The second was an Earth Sciences mentor network map.

Both of these graphics use a "hub and spoke" design, similar to mine.  Both are trying to teach people to "know their networks".   I encourage you to visit their websites and read more about their network mapping.  Learn from them and apply the ideas to your own program design. 

Here's another great resource.

In 2021 I connected with the Christensen Institute on Twitter and posted the graphic below in this blog article, titled "Digging Deeper into Social Capital Thinking".  

The Christensen Institute has a collection of articles on its website that focus on increasing social capital.  I also have a collection of links to social capital websites and research in the Tutor/Mentor library.  The more you know and understand these terms and how expanding social capital can be a strategy for creating opportunity while reducing violence, and improving workforce readiness, the more you might apply these ideas in your own work.  

So how are youth programs showing social capital in their program design and outcomes? Are they?

From posts I see and websites I review, I know many Chicago tutor/mentor programs are connecting inner-city kids with adults from diverse workplace backgrounds.  At the left is a post on Twitter from Chicago Youth Programs, Inc. Their website does a great job showing their long-term support for kids and families.  However, I don't see the term "social capital", although they certainly do help kids build their networks.

Furthermore, I don't know of many foundations funding youth programs based on their social capital-building designs.  I pointed to recent MENTOR research in this article, that shows how few foundations fund long-term operations. That's a problem. 

There's a lot to digest in this article. The two mentor network mapping sites that I point to above focus on adult-to-adult mentoring.  The Christensen Institute seems to focus on what schools can do to expand student networks.  

Thus, I don't see many using work of people like Valdis Krebs to figure ways to show how student networks expand over a period of years as a result of intentional program design, funded by committed philanthropic partners.

I'm still connected to Leo Hall, who I first met in 1973 when I was assigned to be his tutor/mentor.  He's one of many former students, volunteers and staff members whom I'm connected to on Facebook. 

I've dabbled with network analysis over the past 20 years.  In 2010 we set up this intern group on our Ning site, where our goal was to create a tool to map network growth.  That fizzled when I could not retain interns for more than a few months. 

In 2012 I created a network analysis map showing my Facebook followers. You can see the analysis in this PDF essay.   

I'd love to find student researchers who'd continue the network analysis work I point to above.  It's not something I can do on my own.

Are you doing this type of analysis?  How can we apply the network mapping graphics used in workplace mentoring to better understand the impact and program design of youth tutor/mentor programs?  How can we convince funders to provide operating dollars based on this information showing up on a youth program website?

Where are you connecting and talking about building social capital for youth in high poverty areas?  I host a list on Twitter that includes the people I've mentioned here.  I hope you'll connect.

Here's my list of Chicago youth tutor/mentor programs. Take a look. See which, if any, are building social capital through program design and which, if any, are writing about this in their blog, or strategy pages.  If you know these programs, connect them to articles like this on my blog.

Thanks for reading.  As usual, I encourage you to connect and follow me on social media and to visit this page and make a contribution to support my work.

5-5-2025  update - here's May 2025 newsletter from Julia Freedland Fisher and the Christensen Institute. Note the feature article about social capital.  click here

Maps, Time, Social Capital

Below is a graphic that I've been working on this past week. If you work your way through it I hope you'll have a better idea, and commitment, to the work that needs to be done in many places.

At the top of the graphic I show an arrow, that represents support all kids need, for the first 20-25 years of their lives, to help them through school and then, into and through their adult lives. Some kids, like Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk, had much greater support propelling them to career success. Those are extreme examples, but most kids have a larger natural network of support than kids in high poverty areas. 

That arrow comes from this "mentoring kids to careers" graphic, which I created in the late 1990s.  It shows first grade through 12th grade, then college or vocational training, as a series of steps. At each step kids need a variety of different supports and/or are influenced by people who work in occupations that youth might aspire to in their own futures.  If you open this concept map, you'll see a different version of this timeline.

As I said above, all kids need some of these supports and influences.  However, if you read many of the articles in this section of my library, you'll see plenty of evidence showing that kids living in high poverty areas don't have as many naturally occurring supports or career models as do kids in more affluent areas. That means someone, or many people, need to help make these supports available and keep them in place for 12 or more years.

This leads to the next element on the graphic, which are the maps.  

I've been using maps since 1993 to visually show areas of Chicago with high concentrations of poverty and many indicators showing kids and families need more help.  Without a map you could have a long list of places you're helping, but still be missing a larger number of other places that need the same help.

You can find the maps shown above in this article. You can find hundreds of articles on this blog, and the MappingforJustice blog, showing similar maps and encouraging leaders to use them to guide resources into all of these areas for many years. 

The map graphic I've used is a mashup of maps from three sources.  In this concept map you can find many data platforms that could be used to create similar map stories. 

We see media using maps every day to show troop movement in Ukraine. Why can't we see similar maps showing the growth of youth and family support programs in every high poverty area of the  USA?

My focus has been on helping long-term, volunteer-based tutor and/or mentor programs grow in all high poverty areas as a way of expanding the networks of support available to kids, helping them through school and beyond. 

Thus, the arrow, or timeline, indicates multiple years of support. The map illustrates that many places need the same type of support for many years.

The graphic below visualizes the need for every industry to have strategies that distribute volunteers, technology, dollars and more into every neighborhood...and for school and non-school programs to be places where kids connect with a wider range of learning and career opportunities than might be normally available in their own family and neighborhood. 

While I led a tutor/mentor program from 1975 through 2011, which collected inner city kids to a wide range of workplace adults, I did not start to understand this as a form of bridging social capital until the early 2000s.  

Here's a link to one of the earliest articles that have influenced my thinking about social capital. One introductory paragraph says:

“Social networks that can bridge across geography, race and class are key to success in the new economy”, says Professor Manuel Pastor, Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied social networks in Los Angeles among Latinos. ‘Hard’ skills are essential, but it’s the connections and mentoring that provide information about what skills are necessary and a vision of how acquiring them can lead to new opportunities for all our residents”.

This was written by Bob Pearlman.  The research he points to can be found at this link.  His current website is at this link. 

Since then I've aggregated links to many articles about social capital, which you can find here, and have posted 30+ articles on this blog that focus on social capital.

Here's a TED talk about expanding students' social capital - click here

In this article I point to an earlier influence. It was a book that I read in the mid 1990s, titled American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, by Douglas Massey. This book emphasized how disconnected people living in highly segregated, high poverty, neighborhoods were from the resources that might make lives in those communities better for residents.

I created this presentation more than 20 years ago to show why organized tutor/mentor programs are needed in high poverty areas and actions the Tutor/Mentor Connection had piloted since 1993 to help such programs get the attention and resources each needs to constantly improve.   The graphic I've included here visualizes some of the different types of learning, mentoring and tutoring that might take places in a site-based program.

These strategies have been based on the premise that areas of concentrated, high poverty, have too few people working in the wide range of careers that are modeled daily by parents, family and neighbors in more affluent places.  Thus, such programs need to be built in order to expand the social capital for kids in poverty areas.

However....  that does not mean there are "no people" living in high poverty areas who have jobs and careers.   That's the final element included in the graphic above.  Kids and adults need to learn "who you already know" who might be someone who can mentor them and help open doors to opportunity.

This was emphasized in a social capital research webinar that I attended last Friday. The speaker was Edward DeJesus, who leads a group called "Social Capital Builders".  He is teaching "social capital literacy" to businesses, organizations and young people.  

I encourage you to read this blog article by Edward, titled "The Case for Social Capital Literacy".  

You can also view the webinar, at this link. 

The need for social capital literacy is not really a new concept. Bob Pearlman's early 2000s article said, "Networking, or acquiring a social network, is a key skill of the 21st Century. It’s how you learn, and how you connect."  

What I'm trying to emphasize is that these skills are not being taught in enough places and that programs like Social Capital Builders are trying to do that.  If you're working with kids you should reach out to Edward and see if his lesson plans might be used in your own efforts. 

Here's another version of the "hub and spoke" graphics shown above. 

I share it in a presentation titled "virtual corporate office" and in these blog articles.  

This shows how different industries could "distribute" learning and mentoring opportunities to kids in all high poverty areas, via school and non-school programs.  Social capital literacy could be a separate box, or could be a part of the mentoring coming from each industry.

The map reinforces the need for these forms of learning and mentoring in EVERY high poverty neighborhood. The timeline emphasizes the need for such learning to be consistently available for many years.  The other graphics emphasize that businesses in every sector could be supporting organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in multiple locations, not just one or two favored programs. 

Let's look at the timeline arrow once more.  If you click and enlarge it you'll see different types of learning activities that are appropriate for different age levels.

Here's another quote from Bob Pearlman's article:

"But the most significant finding in the study was that a student's social network can have a significant impact on his/her career choice. Students whose parents are both in high-tech careers are more likely to be interested in technology careers themselves. In addition, 83 percent of students rely on personal connections for career-related information and guidance."

I believe that the earlier a young person becomes involved in a well-organized, mentor-rich non-school program, the more benefit that program will have. Stronger bonds will be built with mentors, and with the program itself.  That's important because while a volunteer might leave after a year or longer, the program's ability to provide continuity, and a replacement mentor, helps keep the youth involved.  As a youth moves from middle school to high school the support offered can lead to part time jobs, internships, college access, scholarships and ultimately job and career opportunities. 

The type of mentoring and social capital literacy Edward DeJesus teaches depends on the maturity and motivation of the mentee. This is true with most forms of workplace mentoring that I've looked at. 

Kids in primary school where fundamental learning habits can be reinforced, and career aspirations nurtured, don't yet have that level of maturity.  However, by middle school, and early high school, I think most kids would be ready to take more control over their own futures, if there were people helping them.  

We need to make that happen. 

This  has been a long post. Thanks for reading. I hope we connect on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn.

If you want to support my work, please visit this page and use PayPal to send a contribution.