Building Great Tutor/Mentor Teams

I created the graphic shown below in December 2016 for this article.  In today's article I'm going to re-emphasize the need to teams with a mix of talents and networks at every tutor/mentor program in Chicago and other places to help build and sustain long-term birth-to-work mentoring programs in high poverty areas.

Below is another graphic that I've used often.

I've been a football fan since the early 1960s and know that for a team to have a winning record, or be the champion of their league, they must have talented, highly motivated, players, with specific skills and experience, at every position on the offence, defense and special teams. Even the coaching staff needs special skills. 

It's the fans, owners, media and city leaders who provide the resources to build and sustain great teams.  As a long-suffering Chicago Bears fan, I recognize that this is not easy.

So let's look at another graphic.  In the upper left is a photo from the mid 1990s, showing teens and a staff member from the tutor/mentor program that I led from 1993 to 2011. At the lower right is one of those teens, in 2010 when she spoke at the program's year-end dinner.

I'm still connected to most of these teens, and many others who were part of tutor/mentor programs I led from 1975 to 2011 (I left the first program in 1992 and we formed the second program, which we named Cabrini Connections).  Visit this conversation on my Facebook page and you can see many student and volunteer alumni (and Claudia Bellucci, the staff member in the top left photo) posting "Happy Birthday" greetings to help me celebrate my December 19th birthday. 

If you rotate the graphic so that it is vertical, you'd see the message shown in the graphic below:

At every school and non-school program a range of age-level learning and enrichment opportunities are needed to help kids move from one grade to the next, then the next, until they graduate, more through college or vocational school, then into the workforce. Along the way volunteer tutors and mentors can provide support and open doors.

I was supported by many volunteers with many skills during the years I led a tutor/mentor program. That prompted me to create the two concept maps shown below:

Talent needed. Click here to open the concept map.

Network needed. Click here to open the concept map.   

These two concept maps show the different skills and networks that need to be involved at EVERY tutor/mentor program in the Chicago area.  They are also needed at the larger community area level, and citywide level, so that great programs grow in EVERY high poverty area.

If an organization can draw talent from a broader network they can accomplish much more than if all of their talent comes from one sector.

One of the challenges is that not every youth serving organization has the resources to hire this mix of talent, or the network needed to recruit volunteers to fill all of these roles.

That's why cities need a "Virtual Corporate Office" strategy that recruits volunteers with functional skills, from every industry, to support individual tutor/mentor programs.  

Between 1973 and 1990 I held various roles in the retail advertising department of the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago.  I learned how functional teams worked daily to support more than 400 retail stores in 40 states, while my advertising team worked to draw customers to those stores.  All of these roles were needed.

In the ROLE OF LEADERS essay shown below I encourage CEOs from every industry to take roles that encourage employees to take on roles that support tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods, with the goal that every program, in EVERY neighborhood, would have the mix of talent needed to do constantly improving work.

Role of Leaders - How CEOs ... by Daniel F. Bassill

There are dozens of other articles on this blog that relate to this article. I encourage you to spend a little time, over many years, reading and understanding them.  I urge donors to endow programs at universities where students study these articles over a period of years, so they  leave college knowing what it's taken me 50 years to learn.

That's because great teams require great leaders, with broad visions.  This country needs a disciplined, sustained effort to develop and support such leaders.  

If you understand this, then please share it with your network, via your own blog posts, videos, GIFs, podcasts, etc.  Help recruit the talent needed in Chicago and other cities with high concentrations of poverty to fuel a broad network of constantly improving, mentor-rich, youth serving programs.

Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday greetings and to those who also sent contributions to support my work.

Over the next two weeks and throughout 2024 I hope many readers will visit this page and make contributions to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  

Workforce Development. Violence Prevention. Role of Business.

I have used the graphic below since the 1990s to describe an ideal youth tutor/mentor program where volunteers from many business and education backgrounds connect with kids in elementary or middle school and provide a wide range of supports that not only help kids through school, but help open doors into jobs and careers.

Each spoke on this wheel leads to an industry segment.  If you read the daily newspapers or view videos like this, or read articles like this Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report, 2018, you'll see that business is very concerned about the future of its workforce, and the growth of its business.

Below is another graphic that I have used often.  Imagine that each of the arrows on the above graphic leading from the hub to a spoke looked like the arrow shown below.

Within the arrow are a variety of age-appropriate supports that business could be bringing to youth in school and non-school programs. Many already do this. However, I've seen few using maps to show an intent to provide such support in every high poverty area of cities where they do business.

In these graphics I include maps, to illustrate the need for birth to work youth development programs to be in every high poverty neighborhood. I use the graphics to emphasize the role of business in engaging its resources, jobs, employee talent and dollars, to build and sustain a system of mentor-rich youth supports in every city where it does business.

The Deloitte report starts out focusing on the role of CEOs and company leaders.  The commitment they need to make is the same one I included in this ROLE OF LEADERS pdf, which I've been sharing for over 20 years!

While Step 1 is leadership commitment. Step 2 is "Appoint a 'get it done' leader to be responsible for researching, developing and implementing company strategies. Step 3 is "do the research" to learn what you already are doing, what your employees are already engaged with, and what others are doing that you could duplicate and do better. The final step is a report to the CEO showing progress made in one year and plans to continue the work in the following year.

I've created a series of concept  maps showing why business should be taking this role. In each are links to articles that should be part of the "research" and "learning" that is done by company planners.  Take a look. Share them. Create your own.

First map focuses on reasons a company or industry should invest strategically in youth tutor/mentor programs that are designed to connect k-12 youth with workplace volunteers.

Benefits to Business - click here

Second map shows reasons to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC strategy.

Why invest in youth development strategy? click here

Third map points to articles from Deloitte and other companies that provide more reasons to get involved strategically in helping pull youth through school and into jobs and careers.

R&D for company involvement - do the reading - click here

This final map shows commitment CEOs from every industry need to be making to help draw kids from high poverty neighborhoods into their future workforce. Strategies developed for this hard-to-reach segment of the population will apply to youth from other economic backgrounds, too.

Put your name and company logo in the blue box - see map

These maps are part of a library of articles that you can find here, and a set of cMaps that you can find here.

Many people have told me often in past years that "this is too much information" and "no one will take the time to read this" yet that's the point of gaining CEO commitment.  This is not charity. This is survival and growth of US industry, commerce and our standard of living. It's about creating equality of opportunity for all Americans and better democracy and standard of living for all.

Ten years ago I wrote this article, talking about a $300 million dollar donation being made to the University of Chicago.  I suggested that some wealthy tech leader could make a similar gift, to establish a Tutor/Mentor Institute on a college campus, with a curriculum that had students from 9th grade through PhD level reading and learning from the articles I've posted on my web sites and blogs and the links in my web library.

If someone had responded to that offer in 2008 that university, and that benefactor, could today be producing maps and articles like mine, with icons showing where graduates from that program were now leading youth tutor/mentor programs in different Chicago neighborhoods, as volunteer board members, paid staff, donors, tutor/mentors, elected officials, media and in other roles.

Similar maps could show business, college, hospital and/or faith group locations in Chicago, with icons on each to indicate their level of strategic involvement with youth and  youth development organizations in their section of the city or suburbs.  Browse articles posted between 2008 and 2011 at the MappingforJustice blog to read more about this idea.

That offer still stands. Maybe in 2028 such a map will be available.

Reaching out to Universities

Here's a graphic that I created a few months ago in preparation for a meeting with some students and faculty at DePaul University in Chicago.

From top to bottom it illustrates a vision of creating youth serving organizations that help urban youth move more safely and successfully through school and into jobs and careers. It compares the planning to that involved in building tall sky-scrapers, where many talents are needed, much financing is needed, and where you work from the foundation to the top floor over a period of years.

The map in the middle illustrates that there are colleges and universities in different parts of Chicago (or other cities) who are full of student, faculty and alumni talent, and serve as anchor organizations able to support the growth of long-term tutor/mentor programs in the area surrounding their universities.

The last two graphics illustrate that while it takes daily effort by many people to build and sustain one, or many, youth serving organizations, this is just one issue that people are concerned with on a daily basis.,

Thus, part of the role of student teams on  universities is to mobilize leaders who will focus their talent and resources on the youth development slide of the pie, while also connecting, sharing and drawing ideas from groups working on other problems, in other places.

Universities are critically important in this process because as we move through 2016 and into future years, there still is no body of knowledge that everyone draws from to build and sustain youth serving programs in high poverty areas that last for 10-30 years and show on their web sites the impact they have had over that many years.  Imagine if there were no thousand year history supporting architecture, engineering and the building trades, but that anyone who wanted to build a building, first had to figure out what talent was needed, and had to build training programs so the talent had the skills needed to build the building. Imagine them doing this while also trying to find the funding needed to develop the talent, and spread it to all the places where tutor/mentor "buildings" were needed.

I've created a huge library of ideas and information, with links to over 2000 other web sites, who each link to many thousand of additional web sites.  Working through this information will take years of study. Universities could make this a degree-earning process and provide manpower to support organization growth at the same time. Below is a presentation that outlines my goal. If you're connected to a university, or looking to put your name on a building at your alma mater, I hope you'll make this your mission.

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

I've written more than 1000 articles on this blog since 2005, and tagged most of them so you can view multiple articles focused on a similar idea. The tags are listed on the left side of this article. Below that are links to other web sites that contain additional information and resources.

Enjoy your reading. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

Career Opportunity for Urban Youth - Data Story Tellers

Since 1994 I've been using maps to tell stories and encourage more people to be involved in helping build and sustain mentor-rich tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods.  In many articles on this and other blogs I've suggested that this is a skill that youth living in high poverty neighborhoods could learn, supported by teachers and/or volunteer tutors and mentors.  We know that youth possess  unlimited pools of creative talent. This just has not been focused in this direction.

Last week I saw an article on my @tutormentorteam Twitter feed titled "Data Storytelling: Big Data's Next Frontier", written by James Kerr.  It emphasizes the talent needed to make sense of the big data that is becoming more and more available.   Over the past decade, I've connected to organizations like WEAVE, a new web-based visualization platform, to encourage them to enlist volunteers and youth to use their data visualizations in stories that make sense of the data, and point readers to actions they can take to build solutions to problems indicated by the data. This is an emerging field, thus, it's something  urban youth could enter on the ground floor.

If you're a parent, volunteer tutor or mentor, teacher or policy maker, I encourage you to look at a map of Chicago, or any other major urban area, and envision icons showing up in all the high poverty areas of the map, indicating that part of the mentoring and learning strategy of such programs is to teach youth leadership and communications skills, using data storytelling, to draw attention and resources to support these programs, and to help fill the map with more.

That can happen if more people use blogs, newsletters, web sites, etc. to include maps and other visualizations to educate and motivate others to take roles that lead to such results.

This PDF shows a variety of map stories I've created since 1994.  If you're a business, or philanthropist, I encourage you to become a sponsor of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, so I can update our maps, keep the map platform available, and keep this resource free to all who might be inspired by the stories. 

What are all the things we need to do to help kids move from birth to work?

Below I've posted one of my presentations, that starts with the question "What Will it Take to Assure that all Youth Born or Living in High Poverty are Starting Jobs and Careers by Age 25?"

   Career Ladder - Helping Inner City Youth Through School to Careers by Daniel F. Bassill

Over the past few years I've connected with a variety of educators via on-line cMOOCs where the ideas exchanged by participants, and the relationships created, are as important as the learning that takes place.  Through this I was introduced to a web platform called EdTalkTech, where educators are connecting and sharing ideas with each other on an on-going basis, via many formats, including Google Hangouts. Last night the hangout focused on a platform called Youth Voices, where youth from around the country are connecting and sharing ideas and reflections. 

I'm currently following the Digital Writing Month cMOOC and through that I connected with Simon Ensor, who shared this Tweet with me:

@tutormentorteam this is an example of doodle to blog. https://t.co/D8kkrsefmm

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 10, 2015

I visited  his blog and saw how he had turned his own free-hand notes into an info-graphic and wanted to encourage him to use concept mapping tools like Kumu to do that.  So I visited Brian Dowling's G+ page to get a link to one of the Kumu maps he has been creating and writing about in his blog.  I found one under the topic of "How Can We Reduce Costs and Still Get the Care We Need?"  

My goal in telling this story is that I think youth in organized non-school programs, along with youth in junior high, high school and college could be asking questions like the one Brian is asking, or the one I posed at the top of this article. They could be connecting on platforms like Youth Voices. They could be mentored by a variety of adults.  The could be sharing ideas on blogs, in videos and in public presentations.  They could be learning many new skills and habits (see article about passionate employee). 

They could be taking an active role in helping all youth have robust and creative support systems helping them overcome obstacles, like poverty, as they moved through school and into careers, with a growing network of adults who are part of their own personal learning and support networks (see article).

This process could engage youth in thousands of locations, focusing on many complex problems, not just health care or poverty.

I also think this process could attract the attention and support of a wide range of funders, ranging from business leaders concerned about the quality of their workforce, to philanthropy leaders who want to stimulate collaboration and information sharing, as well as youth engagement and empowerment.

I hope my ideas inspire others to engage their students in such activities.

Using Maps.Role of Intermediaries

In my last article I pointed to a Chicago Tribune column by Dawn Turner, titled "Interactive maps could combat Chicago violence". In the paragraphs below I provide an example of leadership that could be taken by anyone in one of Chicago's high violence community areas (or beyond).

Here's a map showing community areas on the West side of Chicago, with information showing the number of low income youth age 6-17 in each community area. This is from a report I produce a couple of years ago, using the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator's interactive maps (which are not working now).

The green stars on the map are organizations in my database, who provide some form of tutoring and/or mentoring. I've added information showing churches in the Austin area, who I've learned also support mentoring strategies.

Below is another view of the West side of Chicago, also created using the Program Locator. On this view I added layers showing poverty and showing poorly performing schools.

I also added locations of Baptist and Christian Churches. If you look at the tabs on this graphic, you'll see that I could have also added information on other assets, such as banks, hospitals, universities, drug stores and insurance companies. This map view could have zoomed in to just the Austin area. Using another section of the Program Locator, it could also have shown political districts (Congressional, State Legislator, State Senate). See gallery of maps created between 2008 and 2010.

The idea is to show everyone who shares the same geography, who should be working to help high quality learning, mentoring, tutoring, jobs programs and health programs be available to youth in the area.

This map shows the location of BUILD, Inc, which has a new facility on Chicago's West side. On this map I include a graphic showing the role of intermediaries, who collect and share information that anyone can use to support the growth of mentor-rich organizations. I also include a graphic showing quarterly events that could be held in the neighborhood, and in the city, to draw attention to map stories and draw volunteers and donors to each of the programs operating in different community areas...based on what they show on their web site and what volunteers and donors are learning to look for as they shop for a place to get involved.

I've been collecting this information for over 20 years and have been sharing strategies for as long. Thus, I don't expect most people to have an intuitive understanding of the strategies I'm proposing. What I do propose is that leaders recruit teams of youth and volunteers who dig into the information the way interns have been doing since 2006. Click on this page and find visualizations, videos and blog articles which share understanding of Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies. As others look at my web sites they could create their own visualizations showing ways local leaders can help needed youth serving organizations grow in their own neighborhoods.

One role that needs to be taken is Community Information Collection. My map shows that there are tutor/mentor programs that I was not aware of. In every community area of the city and suburbs, teams could be collecting information to show who is already working to help youth. They could be plotting this information on maps, and sharing it in blog stories. They could be sharing it with myself and others who are building area-wide databases. Read more.

If you're a business, you could have a team doing R&D to find reasons to support employee involvement, as a workforce development strategy. You could also learn ways you could expand your involvement. Read this Role of Leaders Pdf. Look at this article about Research & Development.

If you browse through articles I've posted since 2005 you'll see frequent use of visualizations. I've posted some on Pinterest. Youth, volunteers, elected leaders and others concerned with violence, poverty and inequality can look at these graphics, then write their own story showing how they think the ideas apply to their own neighborhood, or to their own actions.

As more and more people do this we begin to have the impact Bernie Sanders talks about in his Political Revolution.

I mentioned that the Program Locator is not working properly. I'm looking for volunteers or partners who will help me fix current problems and updated to meet future opportunities.

A Visual Tilt-a-Whirl, a Carny Ride of Systems Thinking - Ride With Me

Terry Elliot, who I first met during the 2014 Making Learning Connected MOOC, posted this "Visual Tilt-a-Whirl" statement as an introduction to a July 19th Faceblook post. He included the graphic below, and a link to his blog, where he describes the graphic.

Terry's graphic was remixed in a blog article by Kevin Hodgson, which included a series of graphics created first by one writer, then the other. Then another #CLMOOC participant, Tania Sheko, used her blog to write a review of the interactions between Kevin and Terry, and showing how these were part of a series of visualizations presented this past week as part of the systems thinking discussion hosted by the CLMOOC.

One of the graphics Kevin produced during the week focused on race and poverty. I wrote about it last Saturday.

There have been so many articles and versions of graphics that I decided to create a few slides to share some of these and to show how my own participation is intended to connect my network, and people who are working on issues of poverty, education, workforce development, inequality, etc. to the CLMOOC and similar MOOCs that I've been part of.

So here's the first slide..

And here's the second...

And a third...

And a fourth...

And a fifth...note that in this slide I point to an article by Jeffrey Keefer, which took me on a deep dive into ACTOR NETWORK THEORY

In the sixth slide I express my hope that writers like Terry, Kevin, Tania and many others who are part of the CLMOOC, along with students in their classrooms, will look at the graphics I've created, and why I've created them, and that they'll use their own creativity to give new meaning, or attract new viewers, to these articles.

In a seventh slide I show that interns have been doing this type of work for the past 10 years.

I put these images on my Ning.com page, and added a collection of graphics from my collection, that I hope people will look at, think about, and try to re-mix in ways that the people in their own networks will look at the ideas and become personally engaged.


Find more photos like this on Tutor/Mentor Connection


I'm not as skilled a writer as many of the people I meet in these MOOCS, or who I point to in this list of blogs in the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library. I'm not a graphic artists, or a technology expert. Thus, the articles I've posted here and in other spaces since the early 2000s are like pebbles in the pond, intending to create ripples that attract others who will cast their own, heavier pebbles, into the same pond.

The graphic below was created more than a decade ago by someone I met in an on-line community, well before Facebook came into being. I'm still using it, in presentations like this, to illustrate how our collective efforts can cause greater ripples, and waves or response, than anything we can do on our own.

In the second slide above I point to this CLMOOC map. If you zoom into any of the major US cities, like Chicago where I'm from, you'll only see a few others on the map. This does not mean that people from these cities are not following or participating, but it does indicate that there are far more people who could be connecting and learning from each other than are now participating.

The MOOCs that I've been part of for the past three years focus on learning, looking for ways to more effectively engage k-12 learners. I focus on adult-learning, looking for ways to more effectively engage adults who don't live in poverty and who do live in poverty in deeper learning, reflection, and innovation, that creates and sustains strategies that reach youth in all high poverty neighborhoods with long-term programs that help more reach adult-hood safely, and with the skills, habits and networks that enable them to live their adult lives beyond the grasps of deep poverty.

These MOOCs are a model for such connectivity, and people like Terry, Kevin and many others who are spending time creating stories and visualizations, are examples of what others could also be doing.

Developing talent - Unlocking passion of employees

I created this graphic a few years ago to illustrate the fact that leaders of non-school tutoring and/or mentoring, learning and youth development programs, as well as educators in traditional schools, are constantly experiementing to find ways to build student aspirations and unleash student motivations to learn.

This second graphic is the front page of one of my PDF essays, where I ask "what are all the things we need to do to assure that every youth born in Chicago today is starting a job/adult career by age 25?" This is a question that is not being asked in enough places, yet is at the heart of every thing we need to be doing to help our own kids, and other people's kids, grow up to lead fully productive lives. It's the question that needs to be asked in any conversation about violence prevention, substance abuse, mental health, education, race, diversity, workforce development, and even our democracy.

In this context I encourage you to take 30 minutes to read this report from the Deloitte University Press, titled "Passion at Work: Cultivating Worker Passion as a Cornerstone for Talent Development" This report describes passionate workers as people who "are committed to continually achieving higher levels of performance."

The report describes the concept of worker passion, as the “passion of the Explorer. These are people who focus on a "Domain" or an area of expertise. The report states "The passion of the Explorer is defined by three attributes: commitment to domain, questing, and connecting."

My own Domain, which has developed over the past 40 years, focuses on building and sustaining information bases that support the involvement of others who want to innovate ways to turn on the "light bulb" for every child, and support each child as he/she adopts their own "domain" and moves through school, into the workforce, and through their adult life.

This article is important for two (and many more) primary reasons

a) There are hundreds of youth serving organizations in every big city, and hundreds of schools. Each needs employees and supporters who fit the description of this report.

Since the report says that the US workforce has an acute shortage of workers who fit this description, imagine how much more critical the shortage might be in the different organizations who need to be working collectively, as a village, to help kids move from birth to work.

b) I believe companies can encourage the development of employee passion, or "explorers" by encouraging worker involvement in social causes they care about, and by supporting them with top line company technology, collaboration and learning resources. Such involvement can increase the networking opportunities for employees, support their passion by providing opportunities to innovate solutions to causes they deeply care about, and help build habits that translate back into more traditional profit motivated issues.

This image is related to this PDF, which show roles teams of volunteers might take in helping develop an entire city of youth serving organizations that are constantly improving, and that focus on developing the "passion" within youth. This ROLE OF LEADERS PDF encourages CEOs to engage employees strategically in support of tutor/mentor program growth. Such engagement can unleash the passion and drive within employees and help build skills that return value to the company.

I've been trying to find a way into business talent development and corporate social responsibility conversations for many years. While I host a Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago every six months, I've have limited business participation, especially from people I'd consider "explorers" who were looking for better ways to develop talent within their organizations....or better ways to use limited corporate resources to build and sustain a citywide network of constantly improving, volunteer-based, youth serving organizations.

Yet, as the Deloitte report says, "This is important".

So, if you've read this far, and you think this is important, perhaps you can write an article like Steve Sewall or Mark Carter, and provide your own reasons why companies should make time to connect with the ideas I'm sharing.

June 6, 2018 update:  Here's the Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report for 2018. Talks about the "rise of social enterprise". Click here.

Building teams to support non profit sector orgs

The map below illustrates a key challenge small non profits and social enterprises face. They need a wide range of talent and skills but don't often have the ability to find and recruit such talent, or to keep it for many years.

I have written many articles on this topic, such as this one, since this is the most important challenge keeping us for solving some of the complex problems facing our world.

I'm seeking this same range of talent to support my own efforts to help youth in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs and careers. If you're in the Chicago region, we can meet at a coffee shop, or in the LOOP, or at the next Tutor/Mentor Conference on Friday, November 7.

If you're from a beyond Chicago, anywhere in the world, we can connect on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum, or on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook, as well as by email or Skype. This page provides links and contact information.

White House seeks to Mobilize Mentors

This week the White House is releasing a call for mentors is a part of a series of initial recommendations being released by the My Brother’s Keeper task force. Read story here.

I've not been invited to contribute ideas to the White House plan, even though President Obama was a speaker at a May 1999 Tutor/Mentor Conference that I've hosted in Chicago every six months since 1994 as part of an on-going effort to mobilize volunteers and donors to support non-school tutor/mentor programs reaching youth in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

If I had been asked to share my ideas, I would have used graphics like this to illustrate the need for a year-round campaign, with peaks as school starts in the fall, as we near the year-end holidays, in February, and in May as we near the end of the school year. These are times when extra attention can help mobilize volunteers and donors, or focus on year to year improvement of the programs hosting youth and volunteers. This PDF outlines the type of year-round strategy the White House and others could lead.

I'd also encourage the President, as Commander in Chief, and his team to integrate maps into their planning, to support the distribution of resources, volunteers and programs into all of the neighborhoods where there are high concentrations of youth needing extra support and learning opportunities. This "No General Goes to War without a Map" pdf shows ways maps can be used. This Problem Solving essay shows a planning process that would support the growth of mentor-rich programs in more places.

In addition, I'd encourage the use of graphics to illustrate a long-term commitment needed to help youth entering first grade today be entering jobs and careers in 20 to 25 years. This strategy map is a commitment many leaders could put on their web site, including the President.

I was one of ten delegates representing Chicago at the 1997 President's Summit for America's Future. That's me, standing next to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The Tutor/Mentor Connection was one of 50 organizations from around the country invited to host Teaching Example displays at the Philadelphia Summit. My hope was that the Summit would lead to a wave of new reinforcements to support non-school tutor/mentor programs already operating in Chicago and other cities. Instead it resulted in reinventing the wheel and too few operating resources made available to support what was hoped would be a growing wave of volunteers.

The problem of violence in our inner cities is part of a larger complex problem with many causes which need to be addressed currently, and in an on-going effort sustained by many Presidents, Mayors and Governors over many years. On Thursday, May 29 I posted my review of a report focused on the achievement of Black men and boys and pointed to many sections that show the lack of consistent funding, and leadership, as well as the negative impact of fragmented efforts.

As the call goes out for volunteers, I encourage the President and others to include a call for volunteers to offer their talent to help build the infrastructure supporting volunteer involvement, at the program level, as well as at intermediary levels in cities, states and across the country.

In Chicago, if you're looking to become involved with a youth serving organization, here's my list of Chicago area programs that I've been maintaining for nearly 20 years. Some of these are very sophisticated, well organized programs. Some need lots of help. If they are in a neighborhood with kids who need help, don't wait to be asked. Look for the "contact us" button on their web site and offer your help. You can use this shoppers guide and this virtual corporate office pdf as guides for ways you might help programs grow.

I've been sharing ideas like this for nearly 20 years and have been writing this blog since 2005. I've been maintaining this web library since 1998. One of the most strategic things the President can do is to encourage the growth of learning groups in business, hospitals, colleges, faith groups, political offices, etc. so more people dig deeper into this information and build a more comprehensive vision of how extra adults can help youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, or who need extra help for other reasons, have a support and opportunity system that helps them grow to become productive, contributing adults.

Interns help share strategies through visualizations

This graphic is one of many you can see on the Tutor/Mentor Intern blog. It was created by one of two new winter 2014 interns from South Korea and IIT in Chicago. On this page you can view introductions of other interns from past years, and on this page you can see projects they have done to help communicate the strategies and ideas that have been created over the past 20 years by Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

One goal of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC has been to build partnership with universities, high schools and other programs, which unleash students as researchers, leaders, network builders, etc. who duplicate what Tutor/Mentor Connection has been doing since 1993, but focus their effort on their own community and/or neighborhood. If you'd like to get involved just introduce yourself.

In the Four Part Strategy visualized with this graphic, and described in this presentation, we show that aggregated information can be used by many people to support innovations that lead to more and better programs helping youth move through school and into jobs and careers. There are millions of people adding knowledge to the internet everyday, from formal research, information sharing by different organizations, and opinion pieces in blogs, newspapers, etc.

Once this information is released is has a short lifespan, then becomes archived were few people will ever read it. The second and third steps of the Tutor/Mentor Institute strategy involve a) creating greater daily advertising and public education efforts, intended to increase the number of people who look at this archived information; and b) building facilitation teams in thousands of locations, where people who are building their own understanding of all of this information, lead learning groups that help others to build their understand, too.

In this post on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum, one volunteer wrote, "This forum is essentially modelled on a similar format as Google's. The "In-Forming" Process works something like this:

1. Uninformed people interact with information and become informed.

2. Informed people interact with uninformed people, producing more informed people.

3. Informed people interact with each other.

4. To the point where new information is being passed along to all parties involved, starting the process over again."

The dollars and manpower to create a reach and frequency of daily advertising that would draw millions of people to this information does not exist. Nor do dollars exist for hiring a network of trainers and facilitators. However, just as volunteers in faith groups lead weekly discussions of scripture, student volunteers and interns from thousands of locations could be doing what the interns with Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC are doing, to increase the number of people becoming interested, and helping them become informed, so more people are becoming consistent and strategic in how they help k-12 youth mentoring and tutoring programs become more available to youth in all places where they are needed.

Re-Cycling Good Ideas - Opportunity for Youth

I've written more than 1000 articles since 2005, and many from previous years are just as relevant now as they were when I wrote them. In the research section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection library I point to more than 200 web sites with articles and research on poverty, drop out prevention, social capital, etc. Some were written 20 years ago, yet they also still are valuable resources....but only if people find them and read them.

Thus, I'm pleased to show this presentation which was created by one of the interns from South Korea who was with me from last May through July 3 of this year. This shows work done by other interns in past years. It's one of two presentations like this which were done in the past few weeks. See the second here.



I keep finding new ways to share information from my library. I've been part of a Making Learning Connected MOOC (#CLMOOC) for the past few weeks and one idea shared with me was a tool called "Jog the Web" that enables you to create a list of recommended web sites.

I created this Research on Education, Poverty & Social Capital jog in about 30 minutes by scrolling through one section of my links library and picking a few links for the Jog.

I think young people could be going through web libraries like mine, and using Google searches, to find information that they and adults in their communities might use to build more effective strategies for helping kids move safely through k-12 school and then into college, vocational school, the military, and into jobs and careers.

For instance, school starts in another six weeks. Teens could be building lists of links pointing to tutor/mentor programs in their neighborhood, or to the type of tutor/mentor programs they would like to see in their neighborhood just by browsing through this, this and this sections of my links library.

They could be pointing to reasons and ways adults could support the growth of such programs by creating a list based on past articles on this web site, or by browsing the blog lists on the Tutor/Mentor Institute Library.

They could be creating a variety of presentations, like the videos shown here, to encourage adults to volunteer time, talent and/or dollars to help build a k-12 network of youth serving programs in the neighborhood where they live or in neighborhoods where they are most needed.

All it takes is a few pioneers to start doing this and others will follow.