Rev. Jackson duplicates Mayor Byrne strategy to call attention to public housing

I'm part of a Non-Profit Blog Exchange this week. What's that got to do with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Public Housing in Chicago, or former Mayor Jayne Byrne.

The story on page 5 of the Chicago Sun Times today is titled "Jackson rips cops at housing complex". The photo shows the Rev. Jesse Jackson with a family at an apartment in the Harold Ickes development on the near South Side of Chicago.

The goal of the Rev.Jackson is to draw attention to the needs of residents living in public housing. He along with 20 area ministers distributed 500 turkeys and other food items and drew attention to the harassment by Chicago Police of residents inside the development. In one quote, the Rev. said "We intend to break up the Gestapo-like techniques used in this area."

Jackson moving into a housing complex reminds me of how Mayor Jayne Byrne did this almost 27 years ago when she moved into a Cabrini Green apartment at a time when gang violence was surging in the the area. I was leading a tutor/mentor program serving kids in the Cabrini Green area at that time and I remember it well.

In fact, a few days prior to the Mayor moving in, I was at a meeting of several church leaders who were talking about what could be done to stop the violence. I remember telling them, "why don't you call on members of your congregations to be leaders, volunteers and donors who support tutor/mentor programs as an alternative to involvement in gangs in these areas." Or, "why don't you vote for elected leaders who do more to make such programs available.

To my knowledge none did much of this, and the Mayor moving into a Cabrini Green apartment did not do much to help my tutor/mentor program get volunteers. I'm not sure anything has changed and that Jackson going into Ickes is going to lead to a faith based effort that draws volunteers, leaders and donors into tutor/mentor programs in the 60616 zip code where the Ickes complex is, or to any of the other high poverty neighborhoods of the city where tutor/mentor programs are needed.

It would be great if when the Rev. Jackson calls attention to the problems of the neighborhood he'd point to the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and say "search the 60616 zip code, sorting for tutor/mentor programs, serving junior high, or high school youth, and see what programs you can find."

If you do this you'll see six that offer some form of tutoring and/or mentoring to junior high school kids, and just one Boys & Girls Club offering any type of mentoring to high school kids. That means the neighborhood has few alternatives for its kids in the non school hours, other than gangs or hanging out. If you search other zip codes you'll find even few programs in some areas, and more programs in other areas.

There should be good programs in every high poverty neighborhood, for every age group.

When leaders begin to put this message into their own communications, pointing the people who listen to them to places where volunteers and donors are needed, we'll begin to get more consistent support for these programs.

That brings me to the Blog Exchange. A Blog Exchange connects me with another blogger, who I've never met. We look at each other's web sites and write something about what the other is doing. One of my past blogging partners was the Smart Communities blog. As a result of a first introduction, I'm now a contributing member to the Act Now wiki hosted by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. This led me to organize my own blog exchange around the conference I host in May and November.

I'm always learning new things when I read what other bloggers are writing.

This time I'm matched with Kivi Leroux Miller's Nonprofit Communications Blog. This was a surprise to me, because this is the blog I point to on my own blog as a path people can go to and learn more about fund raising, philanthropy, marketing, etc., by reading what these bloggers write on their own blogs. Kivi's blog is loaded with good ideas for how to get a message spread to many people. The blogs she links to have a wealth of additional good ideas.

When I visited her blog today I found a section I had never seen before. It's a "how to" for non profit bloggers. Great stuff!!

I'll bet she could condense this article to have the size with twice the impact. I hope she tries.

So what does this have to do with Rev. Jackson and Public Housing. My goal is that many people are using their visibility and writing ability to talk about ways we can solve poverty by building and sustaining comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs that mentor kids through school and into jobs and careers.

Every time a leader points to the problem, they should point to a solution, just the way Kivi and other bloggers point to web sites of other non profit bloggers. Every time a tutor/mentor program is featured in a news report, they can draw attention to every other program if they just finish their interview with "look here for more information" and point to a web site like the T/MC that links to many other web sites.

Not every tutor/mentor program is equally good at telling their story. I'm over 60 and my writing habits are pretty well set. The only way I can tell my story better is that good writers take me on as their own community service, and tell my story for me. Thus, if students in high school writing classes or college journalism or marketing courses adopt tutor/mentor as a cause, they can spread out and tell the stories of tutor/mentor programs in their city on a daily basis.

This adds up to a growing public awareness that leads more people to be volunteers, leaders and donors in more places, at programs that end poverty, one child in a job at a time.

If you're a Mayor, or pastor, point to the tutor/mentor programs in your community the next time you are delivering a sermon.

Creative Economy 101

The Smart Communities blog has started a Creative Economy 101 discussion.

It references an article in Business Week that I encourage everyone to read, especially the people in industry who are concerned about skill shortages and/or diversity in their workforce, or those people who think kids should be learning to think, innovate and solve problems in public schools, rather than correctly answer the questions on standardized tests mandated by NCLB.

As you read this, thinking about ways the accumulated knowledge of tutor/mentor and business leaders could have a growing impact on building and sustaining connects that influence the choices and habits of young people as the grow up and choose careers. Think about the role leaders in industry might take to support the growth of such places in all neighborhoods where they do business, where they have customers, or where families of employees live.

How would Jesus, or ML King have worked to solve this problem? I wrote about this here, and here.

Here are a couple of essays to stimulate your thinking:

Tipping Points - what are the actions individuals, organizations might take to assure that more youth are entering jobs, careers by age 25?

Theory of Change - What results to we hope to achieve from our actions?

Role of Leaders - what role can business, faith, university and hospital leaders take to achieve this vision, and meet their own workforce development and diversity goals?

Process Improvement and Innovation knowledge base - visit these links and learn from the same people we learn from.

Creating Pipeline to Jobs & Careers

Pipeline to Careers cMap - click here

A couple of days ago I wrote an article about a forum I attended, during which leaders of manufacturing companies talked about workforce development issues.

What I'm concerned about is that business leaders seem to be competing for youth who have reached 10th or 12th grade with the grades and social skills to be able to succeed in an apprentice program, or in a college track.

I think that with the shrinking workforce and competition for skills workers, there won't be enough of these young people to feed the huge economy, and that unless business leaders develop strategies that reach inner city kids, as early as elementary school, this group of young people will continue to drop out before they reach the stage when they would be able to become an apprentice or enter college. Even kids who do graduate from big city public schools may not have the critical thinking and problem solving skills desired by industry, because of the education and policy emphasis of teaching to the tests.

I created a map illustrating my vision that companies encourage volunteers and customers to connect with kids in non school tutor/mentor programs, and that these programs be challenged (and funded) so that they can provide a wider range of enrichment, learning and skill development activities, to go along with tutoring and mentoring.

I'm hosting a conference on November 15 and 16, and I hope business and health care leaders will attend, to discuss ways they can use their resources more strategically to support this pipeline to careers strategy, in multiple locations throughout the Chicago region, and in other major cities, not just in one or two locations.

I hope you'll help me recruit leaders from tutor/mentor programs, as well as from faith groups, businesses, hospitals, colleges and civic groups to participate.

Tips for Mentoring, from program in Australia

I've been encouraging others to share their experience via blogs, and to use blog exchanges as a way of connecting our networks and drawing more visibility, volunteers and operating dollars to all of us.

One leader to take this up is Robin Cox, who leads a program in Australia. His blog has great information, in fact, it's almost a training manual for anyone who is starting or leading a program.

I hope you'll take a look and read it often.

These are the types of experiences we try to share at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference we hold in Chicago. If you're able to participate, the next one is November 15 and 16. I'm still looking for workshop presenters, so please share your time and talent.

Is College the Only Path to a Rewarding Career?

I attended a conference in Chicago today titled Mobilizing to Attract Skilled Workers to High Tech Manufacturing. This was a Program of Swiss Business Hub (USA), the Trade Commissions of Switzerland to the United States.

The speakers talked about the critical skills shortage that will face the US and other countries around the world as their populations shrink over the next two decades and as the baby boomer retire. Dr. Ed Gordon's book the 2010 Meltdown provides an excellent overview of this impending crisis.

What was provoking is that many of these speakers talked as though there were a conspiracy of higher education and government leaders to channel youth from high school into college, while ignoring and under investing in high paid careers in manufacturing. I hope to write more about this later this week, but to start you thinking, here's an essay titled, A Career in Toolmaking or Machining Technologies: The Right Choice for Students, Community and Country, that I hope you'll read .

At the same time, there was also a clear message that high schools, colleges and industry need to be working together on workforce development goals, for the good of the country. I remember a time around 1998 when I was in the office of Gerry Chico, the Chairman of the Chicago Board of Education. On his wall were 10 steps to school reform. Step 6 was "prepare youth for careers". I said to Chico, shouldn't that be steps 1, 2 and 3? He grabbed his assistant excitedly and said "He gets it! He gets it!"

Unfortunately public education leaders and policy makers still don't seem to get it.

Connecting with YouthNet in UK

I'm constantly searching the net to find others who are using blogs and social network forums to link leaders, volunteers and donors with each other in ways that might build relationships or lead to better practices to support the on-going operations of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.

Today I found a discussion hosted by the UK based YouthNet. One question in the article I read was "How do we engage with "the public" more on the issues of transparency, effective ways to give and charity governance?" This is a challenge I feel all the time, but in a broader sense.

How do we cut through all of the media messages that hit all of us every day to get a bit of attention on issues related to helping disadvantaged kids?

How do we get people who already are overloaded with raising their own kids, taking care of parents, dealing with jobs/careers, or concerned with local, national and/or world politics, to spend a few quality minutes each week reading or blogs, or spending time with a youth as a volunteer tutor/mentor?

We don't have advertising dollars to use like big businesses. We can't be like newspapers getting reader attention with headlines that sensationalize bad news.

I don't have an answer, other than linking to blogs where other people are also asking the question and looking for the answer. If you're writing about this, why not write about us in your own blog and let's work together to attract viewers to ours sites.

Honoring a Network Weaver - Steve Habib Rose

I was saddened to hear about the sudden death of a person I've never met face to face, but have grown to know and admire through out many conversations on the Internet. His name is Steve Habib Rose. If you'd like to know more about Steve, and contribute to his memorial, visit http://www.wiserearth.org/group/habibsgarden 

I met Habib in the Omidyar community nearly 2 years ago and over a period of months we began to grow closer together around Network Weaving concepts. Just last week he posted an article on his blog that connected his network to the Tutor/Mentor Connection network: http://group10.sustainapedianw.org/ He started a Network Weaver's discussion on Ned after Omidyar closed. It's at http://www.ned.com/group/networkweavers/news/9/ 

 In one recent conversation he had one of those "aha" moments and realized how many people he knew in Seattle who he might introduce to me and the T/MC. He sent me two introductions in the past week. Steve was a person with one of the most generous spirits that I've met on the Internet, or in the non virtual world.

I think we might have talked only once on the phone, but through many online exchanges we came to know and trust each other. I'm sure that in whatever spiritual world he has gone to he's introducing people to each other, and pointing to us who are still doing this work on earth.

Stop the Violence Discussion on TV tonight

ABC 7 Chicago's Ron Magers and Cheryl Burton will lead a discussion about how to stem the growing tide of violence against the children of Chicago in the half-hour special STOP THE VIOLENCE: LESSONS ALTERNATIVES, Wednesday, September 26th at 10:35 p.m. on ABC 7.

During this follow-up special, Magers and Burton will initiate a conversation with community leaders focusing on education as a key component to helping curtail violence, the impact of active parents on students' education and the role community members can play in creating compelling alternatives to gang activity.

Joining Burton and Magers for the continuing discussion on the best ways to keep our children safe are Arne Duncan, CEO, Chicago Public Schools, (CPS); Diane Latiker, founder, Kids Off the Block ; Phillip Jackson, executive director, The Black Star Project ; and Meredith Rodriguez, education outreach specialist, BUILD Chicago (Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development) .

The special will be featured on-demand at www.abc7chicago.com

We've included a map with this story so that in the follow up to this discussion, leaders will innovate ways to support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in all poverty neighborhoods, as a strategy for violence prevention, workforce development and public health.

The three organizations who will be part of the ABC 7 panel are all included in the Chicago Program Links section of the T/MC web site. These programs and the other 190 programs listed ALL need constant media attention, volunteers who serve as tutors, mentors and leaders, as well as flexible operating dollars that can be used to pay for rent, staff, training and other essentials required to make these organizations consistently available to more youth in Chicago, or any other city.

I hope that anyone who is aroused into action because of the ABC 7 report will visit the T/MC web site, join the forums, or attend the November Conference.

After the media turns its attention to another problem, it's up to us to innovate ways to keep public attention focused on this problem.

Reframing School Dropout as a Public Health Issue

"Good education predicts good health, and disparities in health and in educational achievement are closely linked," writes Nicholas Freudenberg and Jessica Ruglis, in an article posted at http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2007/oct/07_0063.htm

The authors write "If medical researchers were to discover an elixir that could increase life expectancy, reduce the burden of illness, delay the consequences of aging, decrease risky health behavior, and shrink disparities in health, we would celebrate such a remarkable discovery. Robust epidemiological evidence suggests that education is such an elixir. Yet, health professionals rarely identified improving school graduation rates as a major public health objective, nor have they systematically examined their role in achieving this objective."

Last week I wrote about my participation in the Pathways into Health conference. I encouraged participants to continue to network via on-line forums.

In the Freudenberg/Ruglis article one recommendation was to target schools and cities with the most serious dropout problems for intensive intervention, saying "in more than 20 cities at least three-quarters of high school students attend schools where fewer than 60% of students graduate". Graduation rates for 10 largest public school districts are included in the report. In Chicago the 2001 graduation rate for African Americans was 42.1% and for Hispanic youth was 50.8%.

I'd go further and encourage them to use maps to show where poverty and poorly performing schools are concentrated in these cities, to create marketing plans that distribute solutions into each of these neighborhoods.

In their conclusion, Freudenberg/Ruglis wrote, "seldom have health and education professionals been in a better position to work together to achieve common goals. Rarely has a single problem -- high drop out rates -- contributed to so many adverse social, economic, and health conditions."

I read this article with enthusiasm and I hope it stimulates other health care professionals to look outside the box for partners and solutions to the drop out problem.

However, outside of the box means outside of the school building, and the non school hours, not just non-traditional thinking.

In previous blogs I've pointed to the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools as a leader in a movement to make learning supports a part of public education policy.

In my writing, my only criticism with these articles has been that solutions have tended to be primarily school-based. Even when the Freudenberg/Ruglis article talks about connecting young people to caring adults, they tend to emphasize building connections with adults at the school, and not in the non-school hours when kids can connect with adults who hold jobs and work in other careers beyond education and social services. Cabrini Connections is an example of such a program.

In the 10 biggest cities poverty is a root cause of poorly performing schools and the number of kids living in poverty neighborhoods is well over 100,000. I enthustically encourage education and health leaders to connect their strategies.

However, I also feel they need to connect with business and workforce development leaders and look at the non-school hours and non-school locations as times and places when adults can connect with kids in long-term mentoring and tutoring programs.

Such connections can expand the network and skills of adults involved who model a diversity of different aspirations and career opportunities, and can expand the number of people who are personally connected to these kids, and care enough to give time, talent and dollars to build and sustain comprehensive systems of support.

We can, and should, make these connections in Internet forums. However, we can also connect in face to face events. We're hosting a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in the South Suburbs on Nov. 15 and 16.

If you have read this far, you're interested. I hope you'll bring your network to the conference.

What does it take for a student to succeed?

Nicole White, who is a Public Service Fellow from Northwestern University wrote a summary of an article by Paul Tough in the New York Times Magazine, titled "What it takes to Make a Student.

You can read Nicole's article here.

In the conclusion to Tough's article he challenges us to consider whether we have the will power to build the types of programs needed to reach and help more kids get the type of learning support they need to compete with more affluent kids. I think this challenge should be one of how do we provide the resources to help these kids compete with kids in China, India and other countries who are doing more to prepare their kids for 21st century jobs.

The reason I support volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring is not that it expands the network of adults working to help kids move through school and into careers, but that the involvement of volunteers in the lives of these kids can expand the number of adults who are personally connected and willing to sacrifice more to help kids who are not their own.

Unless we expand the number of people personally involved, and reading articles like Tough's, we'll never have the national will-power to make the investments in learning and mentoring that are needed all over the country.

Agree? Don't agree? Why not come to the November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference and connect with others who operat tutor/mentor programs, or who understand how important they are to workforce development and diversity strategies.

Pathways Into Health Conference, Sept. 14, 2007 in Chicago

I've been invited to be part of a mentoring panel at a Pathways Into Health conference being held in Chicago this Friday. This is a unique event focused on the ways distance learning, on-site education and cultural integration can support the positive youth development of American Indians and Alaska Natives.

I'm involved because the challenges of building and sustaining programs that are in all the places they need to be, and that connect youth with a variety of mentors and age-appropriate learning opportunities, are the same challenges we face in big cities. The primary differences are geography and population density.

Furthermore, I'm interested in helping health care professionals become more strategically involved in supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs, as part of their own diversity, workforce development, and poverty reduction strategies. Leading actions that motivate young people to make more healthy decisions can lower the emergency room costs of many inner city hospitals, and in some cases make a difference between staying in business or ceasing operations. Providing mentors and learning experiences that help young people build aspirations for careers in health care, can help meet some of the workforce needs of these same hospitals, lowering their costs of attracting and keeping key employees.

Thus, this is a good place for me to network. I've posted my introduction on my web site. I also have invited others who will be part of this conference to introduce themselves by posting a comment on this blog message. Thus, even if you won't be in Chicago this Friday, you can meet some of the people who will be attending.

Ways to Work Together

School started in Chicago today and CPS leaders did everything they can to get kids into class for the first day. At the same time, the Chicago Tribune did the third of a 3-day feature talking about the work of a teacher in one of the Chicago schools that was completely re-started last year.

Small non profits around the city are also getting started. However, they don't have the advertising dollars and visibility of CPS, and the local paper's not doing feature stories on how youth and volunteers connect in tutor/mentor programs. Thus, many neighborhood programs will not be as successful at attracting volunteers, or donors, meaning kids attending some of these schools won't have the extra adult support that a non-school tutor/mentor program might provide.

That can change. This summer a student from Hong Kong Baptist University was a volunteer with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. He converted one of my pdf essays to flash animation, and I encourage you to view it and show it to your friends, co-workers and church leaders.

One shows a service-learning loop in which volunteers who become involved often reach out to enlist others. (Editor note: this animation was created in 2011 to update the original created in 2007.  2017 update. This video was created to show the animation, since Flash is no longer supported on many browsers.)

You can find the pdfs in the Tutor/Mentor Institute library section of our web site.

These illustrate ways people in different cities, or different countries, can work together to create business and philanthropic leadership that supports tutor/mentor programs in many cities, not just in one or two high profile places in a big city like Chicago.

Another way people can help is by directing a workplace fund raising donation to Cabrini Connection, Tutor/Mentor Connection, or to your own program. Here's another example of animation used to create an ad that we'll be sending out via email to ask our volunteers to help us increase workplace donations.

I hope you are able to borrow these ideas to help you in your own tutor/mentor program. And I encourage you to share your own strategies, via blog links, or by participating in the November 15 and 16 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference.

If we link our strategies via the Internet, we can do much more to help kids in our communities than if we continue to operate in isolation.

National Service Feature in TIME magazine

There is a nice special section on National Service at http://www.time.com/service

I encourage you to read it and share your thoughts. The timing is good because my hope is that this article encourages more people to think about ways they can volunteer in a tutor/mentor program. If you're someone who is reading because of this article, you can use the Chicago Program Links and Program Locator to find information about places in the Chicago region where you can volunteer, or make a financial donation to support a tutor/mentor program.

While it's great that TIME has created this focus, I feel we need to expand the discussion beyond getting volunteers involved, to keeping them involved for the many years, many places, and many ways, it takes to help a youth move from elementary school to a first job.

Did you read the TIME article? What are your thoughts?

Learn about Cabrini Connections. View new video on YouTube

School is starting and Cabrini Connections, like all other volunteer based tutor/mentor programs, is seeking volunteers, and donors. While we're looking for people who will spend one evening a week as a one-on-one tutor/mentor, we're also looking for people who will use their talent to help us.

Here's an example. Rebecca Parrish has created a new video about Cabrini Connections, which you can view at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQWwkgRjfO0

If you email this to friends, co-workers, family and alumni, in Chicago, and in other cities, some will support us with time, talent and/or dollars and we'll be able to continue to offer this service for another year.

At the end of the video is a link to the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. If you search for tutor/mentor programs using the Program Locator or find a program section, you'll be able to find places throughout Chicago where you can use your time, talent or dollars to help kids.

We don't make the world better by talking about its problems. We make it better by contributing to its solutions.

Please be a contributor.

Help Recruit Volunteers for Tutor/Mentor Programs

Here is an ad that was created for me by some volunteers several years ago. I use it and two other cartoon images because it illustrates how someone can help a youth, as a mentor, tutor, friend, or by using their talent to help a tutor/mentor programs connect additional tutors and mentors.



This is a different version. It also points to the Tutor/Mentor Connection's web site where people can find information on how to start a program, or where they might volunteer, or enroll a child. However, this is one that a business can put on its web site, or in local media or a trade magazine.

Just put your logo in the middle of the ad, and you're showing your support for tutoring/mentoring.

If hundreds of businesses do this over the next few weeks, thousands of volunteers will become part of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and in other cities around the country.

Staying Alive. An issue for Chicago Public School Students

I encourage you to visit the http://www.district299.com/ blog and read the articles posted on August 17 titled, "Youth Violence & CPS-- A View From Afar"

Links in this article go to newspaper articles in Australia that reflect on the violence in Chicago. This is how the rest of the world sees us.

My vision is that the rest of the world would look at places like http://www.cabriniconnections.net where adults from the Chicago region are connecting with inner city teens in structured, non-school tutoring, mentoring, learning and enrichment programs.

In the Chicago Program Links section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site you can find links to many other tutor/mentor programs who also connect youth and adult volunteers.

In many of these programs there are a wealth of stories about kids who have changed the direction of their lives because of the involvement of a caring adult. Such involvement is not consistently possible if there are no structured programs (meaning rent, utilities, staff, technology, etc. and a long-term vision of helping kids stay in school and move to college and careers) .

Here's a presentation that illustrates this structure.

Most CPS education strategies don't focus much attention, or many resources, on making tutor/mentor programs available in every poverty neighborhood. However, that's the mission of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

All of the tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region, and in other cities, are now looking for new volunteers, and donors, to launch the 2007-08 school year. You can help them find these roles if you take on the role described in this Collaboration Strategies presentation.

We can change what is written about us by changing what we're all doing to help inner city kids.

Average CPS freshman: 19 absences, 2.6 F's - Wake Up Chicago!

The Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Chicago SunTimes featured a story on page 16 that to me should have been on page one. According to a research report produced by the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research, titled What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public Schools

The SunTimes article stated that "the AVERAGE for all 2004-05 freshmen in Chicago Public Schools was 19 absences and 2.6 F's."

At one school the average was 44 days missed! The report ties early failure with later dropout rates.

The authors of this report "examine how school practices affect students’ grades, failure rates and attendance. Students' grades and attendance are particularly better than expected in schools characterized by two features—supportive relationships between teachers and students, and a perception among students that the work they are doing in high school is preparing them for the future."

What scares me is that the responses to this are band-aids, like confining students to one floor of a school, or creating later start times.

No one is talking about systemic change of reaching these students as early as first grade with mentoring, social and emotional learning, arts and enrichment activities intended to build student aspirations and motivations so that when they get to high school they are more prepared to learn.

There are people who are writing about learning styles. Click here, here, and here for a few examples.

These are just a few of the resources on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site that adults can learn from so that the strategies for building student aspirations engage more community stakeholders, start earlier, last longer, and reach the kids who are most disadvantaged because of high poverty surrounding them and their community.

Until writers, community and business leaders, parents and non profits begin to form study groups, and build their own learning habits, too few people will ever read the research and policy as well as philanthropy and community service decisions will be based on sound bytes, not sound strategy.

I outlined a learning strategy in a blog titled ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I show how tutoring/mentoring is a way to engage adults in this learning, in this animated presentation found on the home page of http://www.tutormentorexchange.net.

Mapping a Strategy to Expand Tutor/Mentor Programs In South Suburbs of Chicago

This maps shows a 12 mile radius around the Olympia Fields Country Club in the Southeast part of the Chicago region. It indicates areas of poverty concentrations from 5 to 40%, and shows locations of poorly performing public schools in Illinois (we don't have this info for NW Indiana yet).

If you search the Tutor/Mentor Links Library or Tutor/Mentor Chicago Program Locator, you won't find many volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the area this map highlights. This either means we don't know about them, or they don't exist.

If there are programs that are not in our database, you can email tutormentor2@earthlink.net and we'll show you how to add a program. As school is starting over the next few weeks, being listed will help you attract volunteers and will help parents, teachers and social workers find programs where they can enroll kids. We also hope that business and philanthropy leaders will use this information to develop funding strategies that support multiple programs throughout this regions.

If there are only a few programs, and we think this is the case, we invite you to gather in November for the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, where you can meet leaders of programs, network with others who are trying to start programs, and connect your business and church volunteer strategy with a strategy that helps build more and better tutor/mentor programs in this region.

Research shows that connecting youth in long-term mentor relationships with caring adults can make a difference, however, without places where kids and volunteers can meet, and resources to support this process, too many kids will grow up without this type of support.

You can make a difference. Get involved. Get your company, fraternity, college, hospital or law firm involved.

Do a Mitzvah Every Day. Lawyers in Chicago Celebrate Involvement in Tutor/Mentor Programs

Yesterday was one of the special days of the year for me. I attended the 4th Annual My Hero Award Luncheon, hosted by The Sun-Times Judge Marovitz Lend A Hand Program of the Chicago Bar Association.

More than 200 high profile lawyers, judges and leaders of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs gathered to recognize the involvement of individual attorneys and judges, as well as the involvement of law firms and law associations in tutoring/mentoring programs operating throughout the Chicago region.

The event honors the memory and example of Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, who inspired the creation of the Lend A Hand Program in 1993, and who enabled it to grow with a generous gift from his estate when he died in 2002. The keynote speaker, Joseph A Morris, President of the Lincoln Legal Foundation told stories of Judge Abe, and emphasized his commitment to do something to help someone every day. "Do a Mitzvah every day." was his message.

A poem that the Judge quoted often, titled At Day's End, illustrated this commitment.

What makes this event special is that it not only honors the effort of individual volunteers as tutors/mentors in programs like Midtown Educational Foundation and Inspired Youth, but it recognizes the efforts of volunteers who sit on boards and who help raise money to fund tutor/mentor programs throughout the city and suburbs. The law firm of DLA Piper US LLP was recognized as "Law Firm Program of the Year" because of how it encourages so many of its attorneys to get involved with programs throughout the city, not just one or two high profile programs.

When Karen Wallace received her "Making a Difference Award" she quoted from W.E.B DuBois, who said "the right to learn is our most fundamental civil right". You can read that quote here, as part of a longer article about changes that need to take place in public education if pool and minority students in high poverty neighborhoods of all big cities are to have this right.

Judge Abe said, "Do a Mitzvah every day."

I hope that anyone who reads this will find a way to share this message in their own actions, becoming personally involved, and enlisting others to get involved. If you use your own communications tools -- a blog, a company newsletter, public presentations, etc. --- more people will spend time over the next four weeks searching out volunteer, leadership and donor opportunities in Chicago area tutor/mentor programs as school is beginning to start for the 2007-08 school year.

The result will be that more youth are on this path to learning and careers, and more lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other business sectors are working to build the infrastructure needed to support volunteer opportunities in constantly improving tutor/mentor programs, in Chicago, and in every other city of the country.

Volunteer Recruitment Campaign Planning Meeting

On August 14th at 2pm the Tutor/Mentor Connection will host an open meeting to discuss ways Chicago programs and businesses can work together to increase the number of volunteers who join tutor/mentor programs this fall. The meeting will be held at Literacy Volunteers of Illinois, 30 E. Adams, Suite 1130. If you can attend, email tutormentor2@earthlink.net

If you can't attend, contribute to the planning, and the public visibility, by participating in on-line forums. Read Nicole White's blog and you'll find Links to on-line forums in MySpace, FaceBook, and at Ning.com. Nicole is a 2007 Northwestern University graduate, who is serving a one year Public Interest Program Fellowship with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Read about the goals of the recruitment campaign.

Complex problems require complex solutions

I encourage you to read the article posted on the Smart Communities blog today. It says "We have big problems in this country and we need the free and creative thinking of foundations, government, and non-profits to help shape solutions." Read more.

Sharpton, Nike, Media = Leadership Opportunity

Today's Chicago SunTimes has a story of how the Nike corporation has reached a $7.6 million settlement to a class action lawsuit that accused Nike of racial discrimination in the way they treated customers and promoted minority employees.

It also has a front page story and several inside articles and editorials about the Rev. Al Sharpton coming to Chicago. On the Opinion page the editorial writers offer a "To Do" list of societal problems that Sharpton should address. These include a) school funding, b) gun violence, c) absentee fathers.

My wish list goes like this: Sharpton targets businesses like Nike who make a profit by selling products to minority youth, and motivates them to develop leadership strategies that encourage employees and customers to be volunteers, donors and leaders in volunteer based non-school tutor/mentor programs located in the Chicago region.

He can start right now by helping us mobilize volunteers and donors to support tutor/mentor programs as the new school year is starting. Getting a youth and adult connected in mid September might mean the difference between a youth staying in school and graduating, or a youth joining a street gang, dropping out, and .....

Rev. Sharpton and Nike can both use the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, and Chicago Program Links to determine what tutor/mentor programs are operating in Chicago. In their news interviews, speeches and advertising, all they need to do is encourage listeners to use these internet resources to shop for where they get involved.

Oh, there's one more thing they can do. Most class action lawsuits have money left over. Maybe Rev. Sharpton could encourage Nike lawyers to award that money to the Tutor/Mentor Connection so that we can continue to maintain that database of Chicago programs so that it stays a resource that anyone in Chicago can use to help find a tutor/mentor program, or to help new programs form in areas where none exist.

Has Chicago neighborhood reached a racial tipping point?

In the July 27th Chicago SunTimes a feature article is titled, "Has Scottsdale reached the Tipping Point? After recent violence residents from different backgrounds are wondering if the neighborhood will change forever", writes Mark Konkol of the SunTimes.

Scottsdale is a neighborhood on the far Southwest side of Chicago that is beginning to feel the affect of the migration of lower income minority residents from inner city neighborhoods impacted by gentrification. In January 2007 I wrote about a report released by the Chapin Hall for Children at the University of Chicago highlighted this movement in the city and suburbs.

In Friday's article residents talked about the racial tension that the integration of this previously mostly-white neighborhood has caused, and the potential of "White-flight" similar to that of the 1960's which left many Chicago neighborhoods mostly segregated.

I did a search of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to see if there were any volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the 60652 zip code. While there are three park district sites in the area, there are no comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs listed in our database.

In the SunTimes article, one person was quoted as saying "If we continue to have gang problems up here and property damage and drugs, people will move."

Why wait to let that happen? Why not create a community/business task force and develop a variety of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs to provide non-school learning, mentoring and engagement opportunities for the youth in the neighborhood? Such programs can connect youth and adults from diverse backgrounds and head off further racial divisions.

You don't need to start from scratch. Look at the web sites of tutor/mentor programs operating in the Central part of Chicago. Borrow ideas from them? Invite them to duplicate their programs in Scottsdale.

I did a search on Google to get a map of the Scottsdale neighborhood. The Google map shows a list of local businesses who could provide financial support and leadership for comprehensive tutor/mentor programs. They're in the neighborhood. An investment in prevention and workforce development would benefit these businesses.

If the alderman, or a business leader, or faith leader would take the lead, a community group could form and build programs that support the integration of this neighborhood and make it a great place for people of all different backgrounds to live and raise families.

The story of this neighborhood is repeating all over the Chicago region. Many communities are experiencing a growth of low-income residents but have few or no social services in place to help those new residents climb the social economic ladder. Thus their kids become isolated and are willing recruits for gangs who feed on this isolation.

Do something about it. Act now. Change the script. Don't let the 60's repeat.

Act Now. Help Tutor/Mentor Programs connect with volunteers and donors

School starts in a few weeks and volunteer-based organizations all over the country are beginning to look for people who will share time, talent and dollars to help them connect with at-risk kids.

I've been blogging with Suzanne Morse, of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, and today the title of her blog is New Wiki Articles on Dropout Projects, Mentoring, and Youth Engagement. I encourage you to visit the Act Now section of the Best Practices wiki and look for ways that you can incorporate these ideas into company communications, your United Way campaign, or in sermons and media reports.

Once you begin to write about tutor/mentor programs, your next step is to point to links that help people shop for where they get involved. I encourage you to use the Program Locator and Program Links sections of the T/MC web site, as well as national volunteer search engines, to find programs near where you work or live.

If there are no programs near you, or if they don't serve a youth at the right age group, then use the information in the Tutor/Mentor Resource Library to begin the steps to start a new program to fill this void.

What we do now to help volunteers connect with kids, can help prevent drop outs, gang violence, and make a lifetime of difference for kids who have too few adult supports and learning activities in their own personal network.

Cabrini Connections teens create videos that tell story

What's the difference between tutoring, mentoring and a tutor/mentor program? At one you may get homework help, and even sophisticated academic support (if you can afford it). At the other you may make a friend for life.

At a well organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor program you might get both of these (but not a high priced professional tutors). You'll also get to participate in a variety of learning and enrichment activities.

These are some of the learning activities offered by Cabrini Connections between 1993 and 2011

At Cabrini Connections youth participate in writing, video, technology and college and career activities. Some of the videos our teens have created are now on-line. Some of our interns and volunteers are now creating blogs that tell the stories of our different learning activities. At the Cabrini Blog you can find links to some of these.

In the Tutor/Mentor Institute, one of our interns has converted some of our PDF essays into a flash presentation, showing more of our ideas. This is another example of how young people can use their talent to help non profits reach out for business and foundation support. These presentations are intended to help you understand our concept of a tutor/mentor program, and our vision of a support strategy that would make programs like Cabrini Connections available in many neighborhoods, not just a few.

I encourage you to visit these sites and view the videos and blogs. A picture will begin to emerge of a tutor/mentor program as an enriched learning community, only available to high poverty kids through programs like Cabrini Connections.

If you value these types of programs, please help us raise the money needed to operate them. If you'd like to apply these ideas in your own program, or in your own community, please show then to others who might support you, and help you.

School is starting in a few weeks. Get involved with your time, talent and dollars to help these programs grow.

Students as journalists

For several years I've recognized the challenge leaders of small non profits have in telling their stories on a regular basis. One solution has been to try to enlist college and high school students as journalists. Ultimately, our goal is that we're teaching our own teens to write about what happens every week in a tutor/mentor program.

This week, Nicole White, who is with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection through a Northwestern Public Interest Program Fellowship, wrote about two activities involving Cabrini Connections students and volunteers.

Here's another example. A group of volunteers and teens at Cabrini Connections are meeting weekly, and using a blog to share their experiences.

This illustrates what's possible. If you teach journalism, or English, or lead a service-learning program, why not engage your students as writers who tell the story of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago or in your own community.

If you share your blog address with us, we'll post it to our web site.

Connecting College, Careers, Inner City Teens and Golf

On Monday, July 16, 20 to 30 graduate students from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, will come to Chicago for a three day Chicago experience, where they will host a summer learning workshop for our Cabrini Connections teens. You can read about this on the Cabrini Blog. This connection is intended to help Edgewood students learn about working with inner city kids, while helping our teens build aspirations and habits that help them succeed in school, then move to college, and then careers.




We cannot host this connection, or keep Cabrini Connections in business each year, without donations from many different people and organizations. That's why the Jimmy Biggs Memorial Cabrini Connections Golf Benefit is so important. Jimmy was a 4th grader when he joined the tutoring program hosted by Montgomery Ward back in the late 1980s. He stayed with us through high school and then became part of the Cabrini Connections staff. His vision was that he could recruit 100 business leaders to be supporters of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. He died in 2000, before he could make that vision a reality. Since Jimmy helped organize the 1995 to 2000 golf benefits, we've named this event in his honor, and to keep his vision alive.

Without the money raised through events like this there is no tutor/mentor program, and kids like Jimmy and the students from Edgewood, along with our many volunteers, would never connect.

If you can help support us with a donation, or by playing in the golf benefit on July 19, you're helping many lives be changed. Learn more at http://www.cabrinitmcgolf.org.

Students as Leaders; Learning to Lead

In the messages I've posted previously on this blog, and in the information you will find in the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org web site, I illustrate the use of knowledge to expand the ideas people have for solving problems.

The problem I focus on is helping kids born in inner-city neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty stay in school, graduate, and be starting jobs and careers by age 25.

This is a complex problem because it take 25 years for each youth to take this journey. It requires many different kinds of age-appropriate support in many neighborhood of many cities. This requires a leadership and revenue system that supports the operations of many contributors, just like the funding plan for building a skyscraper provides funding for each of the sub contractors and workers who will be involved in building this structure.

Thus, we not only need to visualize a multi dimension blueprint of the type of operating system that would support this mentoring-to-career process in many places, but we also need to create a learning network that enables people from many places to understand the obstacles and to innovate solutions that overcome these barriers.

While a web site enables us to collect and share information, it does little good if only a few people look at the information and try to understand it, then act on what they learn.

Thus, my role as leader of the Tutor/Mentor Connection is to teach other people to take on this leadership, or network weaving, role. One way I do this is to work with interns from various colleges, teaching them to create blogs and discussion forums where they share what they are learning from me, in an effort to help others learn from them.

We have two interns with us this summer. One is Paul Wei, who is from Hong Kong Baptist University. Paul is the second intern I've had from HKBU. Michael Tam was our first intern, during the summer of 2006. At http://michaelcnt.blogspot.com/ you can read the blog that Michael created and which Paul is now contributing to.

While Paul will only be with us for two months, Nicole White will be with us for an entire year. Nicole is a 2007 graduate of Northwestern University and is just beginning a one year term of service at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, as part of the Northwestern Public Interest Program Fellowship. You can meet Nicole at http://nicolecabrini.blogspot.com/

While Michael and Nicole are working directly at my offices in Chicago, there are many other people and organizations around the world who are using the Tutor/Mentor Connection as learning resource, with me serving as a coach and mentor whenever they ask questions. In the discussion forums of the T/MC Ning site you can meet some of these people and add yourself to this network. If you search Google for "tutormentor" you can find many other places where a network and share this information.

The challenges non profits face in building organizations that constantly improve, and maintain long-term contact between youth and adults are daunting. Unless we find ways to work together to overcome those challenges, few of us will stay in business long enough to succeed, and too few kids will reach their full potential for 21st century jobs and careers.

Nicole and Paul are both college age students. Imagine if students in high schools and colleges all over the world were using web sites to learn about problems and to meet with others to innovate solutions. This could be happening, leading to hundreds of blogs like those of Nicole and Paul, with thousands of youth learning to take on leadership roles that use knowledge to innovate solutions to complex problems.

If you're a service learning leader, or teaching a college marketing or journalism or problem solving class, consider this as an opportunity for serice, teaching and learning.

I hope you'll join us and that you and your students will take on a role similar to Nicole and Paul.

Leadership: A Shared Responsibility

I'd like to point you to three places where there are significant discussions going on.

First is a post on the Chronicle of Philanthropy Blog.

This article points to another article written on the Grand Rapids (MI) Community Foundation Blog

These articles question the blurred role of philanthropy and government in providing resources for community benefit organizations.

After you read these, listen to this interview on the roles young people can take in leadership and problem solving: http://nlcommunities.com/podcasts/1798/blc06/entry127299.aspx

I feel the Internet changes the paradigm. Someone can post and idea, or describe a social benefit, using a web site. Anyone else in the world who is interested can visit that web site and use its ideas in their own actions and network building. Anyone can take on a leadership role to invite more people to look at this information, and anyone can take on a leadership role to help solve the problem that is being described on the host web site.

Thus, it's not a question of "is government or philanthropy doing too much" but a question of "how do we train people to be leaders in using more of their time, talent and resources to solve community or world problems."

If we can recruit more leaders who support the potential of volunteer based tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections , we can have more programs like this available in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other big cities.

International Connections - To England and Back in 72 hours

"Have message. Will travel."

Over the past 15 years my network has expanded to include peers from around the world. Through this process I've expanded my own tool box of ideas that can help me lead the Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection. I've also shared ideas that I hope will help others help young people in many other places.

Last Wednesday evening I flew to England to be a speaker at CWDC’S Integrated Working Conference 2007 for Learning Development Support Services (LDSS) Strategic Managers, hosted by Learning Mentors, which is primarily a school-based support service for at-risk students. I left on Wednesday evening from Chicago and arrived at London seven hours later. I transfered to a flight taking me to Manchester, where a taxi was waiting to whisk me to the conference site about 30 minutes away.

I arrived just in time to participate in a workshop on mentoring around the world. One of the highlights was a video created by Claire Kime, who had visited America in 2004 as part of a Winston Churchill Fellowship. I was one of the people she met when she came to Chicago and that was what led to my invitation to the Learning Mentors conference.

While I participated in workshops on Thursday and Friday, I also delivered a keynote presentation on Friday morning. I've posted it on the T/MC site so that Learning Mentors participants can draw on it for further deliberations, and so that others in different countries can also draw from this.

I flew back to Chicago on Saturday, so my trip lasted a total of less than 72 hours.

While this trip lasted such a short time, my hope is that the results last a lifetime. There was a genuine enthusiasm for collaboration and shared learning among the people I met at this conference. While I hope this means some of the ideas from the Tutor/Mentor Connection are used in their own efforts, I also hope it means that some UK leaders take on the same networking role we do, with a goal of enlisting British universities and multi-national corporations as strategic leaders in comprehensive, long-term mentoring programs that expand adult networks and lead more young people to jobs and careers.

In the past two days I've introduced the Learning Mentors network to several others who I have met in Internet forums, such as Classroom 2.0. Today, I read a message posted by Christine Gray, CEO of The School Volunteer Program Inc., based in Australia. I sent an e-mail to Christine and told her of the Learning Mentors, because many of the concepts that Christine is applying in Australia could also be applied by Learning Mentors in England.

In this role I'm a "network weaver" connecting people and organizations from different places with each other. As others take this role I feel we create a greater public and private sector understanding of the various forms of mentoring and tutoring that lead kids to jobs and careers.

If this happens, we can recruit higher visibility leaders who use their positions of influence to draw more volunteers, leaders and financial supporters to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, and in other cities throughout the world.

This can help us do more to help the teens and volunteers at Cabrini Connections. It can help others like me do more to help the kids they work with.

I've invited some of the new friends I met in England to introduce themselves via my blog, or the T/MC discussion forum.

If you'd like to join this networking, please add your own introduction.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH. How many times do we need to repeat this?

Today's SunTimes features another tragic shooting. We can't fix this problem over night but we'll never fix this until the media end stories of negative news by pointing to places where potential volunteers, philanthropists, business partners, faith leaders and others can learn more about the problem, and find places where they can get involved to help solve it.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago after the last shooting. Please read this and encourage your friends and co-workers to get involved.

Form a learning group at your church, company, civic group. As you learn more about the problem, your involvement will contribute more consistently to a solution. It's not up to the Mayor or Arne Duncan. It's up to each citizen to look in the mirror and say "If it is to be, it is up to me."

Expanding the network - Blog Exchange #11

I'm participating in another round of the Non-Profit Blog Exchange. These have been organized since November 2005. I've found them to be a valuable way to meet new people.

For instance, I'm now sharing information in a Wiki hosted by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. I was first introduced to by exchanging blogs with Suzanne Morse who writes the Smart Communities Blog.

In May of 2007 I launched a Tutor/Mentor Blog Exchange and as a result, connected with Vermont Mentoring and Thierry Koehrlen and Clément Devaux at NosVies.com, who created a cartoon that I used at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference.

My goal of this networking is to bring together leaders from non profits, business, philanthropy, universities, churches, etc. who are already involved in volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring, and who understand the need to work together to solve some of the challenges facing this field.

Because the internet connects us, my partners and friends can be in any part of the world. For instance, I'll be in England on Thursday and Friday, speaking at CWDC’S Integrated Working Conference 2007 for Learning Development Support Services (LDSS) Strategic Managers, hosted by Learning Mentors

In this round of the Non Profit Blog Exchange, I'm exchanging blog reviews with Patricia Perkins who writes the World Touch blog.

I must admit that when I first visited this blog I was a bit put off. The first article I read was a review of the World's Worst Web site. As I read it I was thinking about my own sites and how difficult it has been for me over the past 10 years to find volunteers and donors to provide the resources for me to operate the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and to share what I was learning effectively with others via the Internet. I'm sure a few people have told me how bad my web sites have been. I can also tell you that many people have told me they have spent hours on my web sites, and even created entire new tutor/mentor organizations based on the information they learned.

One of the reasons I participate in Blog Exchanges, and other on-line forums, is that it is a form of recruiting people with the ideas and talent that can help me and others build more effective ways of communicating their messages to the public. Thus, my hope is that when we're critical we're also offering help.

That's why I was pleased as I read further on this blog I found a list of Tools that technologists could use. This is helpful.

I also learned that Patricia will be providing technology services for a new organization called West End Ministries. It will be interesting to watch how this organization communicates its mission and mobilizes resources using the technology talent that someone like Particia can supply.

I hope that as this happens we're able to connect our missions because as I've learned in leading a small non profit for many years, it's not easy. You need many friends. Unless we work together to educate donors on the importance of our work, and the importance of a consistent flow of operating dollars, we'll all be competing with each other for customer attention and an inadequate pool of resources.

I'll be visiting all of the blogs in this blog exchange, and I'm planning to organize another Tutor/Mentor Blog Exchange in August, with a focus on sharing ideas for recruiting volunteers. My goal is that this discussion builds public awareness and draws more volunteers directly to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities. If you'd like to participate, just introduce yourself here, or in the forums at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org .

Cabrini Connections celebrates 15 years

On June 8, 2007 the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection celebrated its 15th year with its annual year end dinner. Above are three youth who have been part of this program for six years each, along with one of our volunteers, who has been a mentor for the past 4 years.

While the newspapers are able to write stories about a few tutor/mentor programs, those of us who lead these programs need to find ways to tell our stories via blogs and web sites. We need to find ways that our volunteers, students and parents are evangelizing this work in their own personal, work and social networks. This has to lead to more consistent funding or even programs like Cabrini Connections won't be able to sustain these long-term connections with kids and volunteers.

If you'd like to make a donation, or lend your time and talent to help tutor/mentor programs grow in all poverty areas of cities like Chicago, email tutormentor2@earthlink.net and introduce yourself.

Tutoring, Mentoring in Media

I'm not sure what has caused this, but the SunTimes and Tribune have been writing stories about tutor/mentor programs recently. I listed a few of these in a discussion I started in the T/MC forum.

While these stories focus on single programs, I feel that Chicago and other cities need to talk about how to make programs like these available in more of the neighborhoods where they are needed, based on high poverty, poorly performing schools, or incidents of youth-on-youth violence.

I think that there's another conversation that these stories can stimulate, which is a comparison of No Child Left Behind Supplemental Tutoring, and long-term tutoring/mentoring offered by programs such as those which have been featured in the media. If you view the links in the Chicago Programs Links section of the T/MC web site, you'll see additonal programs that offer comprehensive, mentor-rich services.

You'll also see that there are very few of these comprehensive programs in the South part of Chicago, and in the South and West and North Suburbs. In reality, there are too few comprehensive, long-term programs in most high poverty areas of Chicago, and probably any other major city.

That's why we need to stimulate a discussion in which teams of leaders from business, colleges, hospitals, churches, and civic and social organizations, are looking at the same information we're looking at, and doing the same type of brainstorming and innovation, with the same goal of making more and better tutor/mentor programs available to more kids who need this help.

If you are part of such a team, I encourage you to use the resources at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org for your deliberations and invite leaders of tutor/mentor programs to be part of your team.

The work we do in June and July can lead to more and better tutor/mentor programs reaching kids as school starts in September.

Turn Bad News into Good News - Rest of the Story

In Thursday, June 7th's Chicago SunTimes, a few stories caught my attention. One was about a 29 year old man accused of killing a bank teller in a recent bank robbery. In describing the man's background the story said "he had a lot of time without parental oversight".

Another story was headlined with "College Bound Sisters". This one was a good news story about how two sisters overcame obstacles and are headed for college. One of the reasons was they were supported by the Mike Trout and the Young Men's Educational Network.

I've been clipping stories from the SunTimes and Chicago Tribune for several years to use as research and evidence showing why and where comprehensive, long-term, mentor-rich, tutor/mentor programs are needed in Chicago. I occasionally map these stories creating concept diagrams like the one on this page. These show a linkage between media stories. However, this linkage is not supported by any obvious media strategy.

Almost every day, one, or more, media stories highlight a serious social problem caused by poverty in Chicago (Rev. Jesse Jackson lables the recent string of shootings a "State of Emergency in Chicago"). Some of these reach a point of public outrage that they are followed by editorials, and/or a series of articles by featured columnist.

While reports of bad news are given more space and featured more often, occasionally, the newspapers will tell stories of students overcoming the challenges of poverty, such as the story about two sisters graduating from high school. Out of a full page only the last few paragraphs showed the help these girls received for at least six consecutive years from the YMEN program.

This is the type of program I have in mind when I say "long-term tutor/mentor program".

However, there doesn't seem to be any consistent strategy from the media (or from public leaders) to connect the bad news stories, the good news stories and editorial commentary, in a daily effort to reduce poverty by mobilizing community resources.

While media might highlight a single act of kindness, like YMEN, they don't use their maps and charts and web sites to point to all of the places in Chiago where there is poverty and poorly performing schools, and where programs like YMEN are needed to help kids avoid gangs and negative behaviors.

Why is this important? Non profits who provide these services, don't have the advertising dollars needed to advertise their products and services every day like fast food or credit card companies do. Thus, they struggle to find donors who provide the flexible operating dollars needed every year to keep these programs available to kids in high poverty neighborhoods.

Only business, media and faith institutions have the ability to communicate this message daily. We need some leaders to step forward to take this role consistently, like lawyers are doing at the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend A Hand Program.

If you use the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to search the zip codes of neighborhoods where there is high poverty, or where the bad news took place, you'll see if there are any tutor/mentor programs like YMEN in those areas. If you scan the program links section of the T/MC web site you can begin to discern the differences between programs like YMEN, Midtown, East Village Youth Program, Chicago Youth Programs, Inc, and Cabrini Connections and programs that exist in these areas.

When you look at this information, we want you to say "ENOUGH." We hope you'll take the advise of another story I saw in a recent SunTimes. It said "You don't have to be Oprah to help kids."

Tonight, June 8th, Cabrini Connections will celebrate its 15th anniversary year end dinner. In other parts of Chicago similar programs will be celebrating another year of tutoring/mentoring. Unfortunately too many neighborhoods don't have programs.

I encourage our media, business leaders and candidates for public office to integrate this "REST Of The Story" message into their own strategies. Every time you talk about bad news, or the need for better schools, end your message by pointing to web sites with resources like the Program Locator and Chicago Program Links, so that your actions are helping people who want to end violence and poverty find places to shop and choose where, and how, they will use their time, talent and treasure to help tutor/mentor programs stay part of the lives of inner city kids in Chicago and other cities.

Follow Up to May Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference

The measure of a successful Tutor/Mentor Conference is how much people work together after the conference to help build more and better tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities. Ellen Ingram, Director of Institutional Relations, University of Toledo (left in photo) and Anastasia Mirzoyants, MA, PhD candidate, (right in photo), were two of our speakers. They showed the planning process that they are leading from the University of Toledo which intends to support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the city of Toledo.

I'm the one in the middle. Anastasia and I began talking last November via the Internet, as she was doing research for their project. After several idea exchanges over a few months, the Tutor/Mentor Connection now is an active contributor to this planning. That's our goal. While we can help the University build more tutor/mentor programs in Toledo, we also want to help one or more universities set up leadership development programs that prepare students and alumni to be leaders of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in every city, including Chicago. In such training, we're aiming for alumni who will lead businesses and philanthropy, not just those who will operate tutor/mentor programs.

The work we're doing with the University of Toledo is just one example of how we share the T/MC knowledge with others. We're also participating in a Learning to Finish wiki hosted by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. In addition, we're mapping our strategy and sharing it on the T/MC web site.

Our aim is to engage students, faculty and alumni of universities from all parts of the world, who each will take a role in creating a better support system for volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, aimed at helping these programs have a greater impact on youth moving through school and into jobs and careers. In another wiki, you can see how we're reaching out to MBA students attending business schools throughout the country.

If you join this discussion, you can help us engage more universities, businesses and others who need to be involved in helping recruit volunteers and donors this fall, as kids living in poverty are starting the 2007-08 school year.

Oprah's call to action for 1,000,000 new mentors

Organizations that connect youth with mentors can all take a moment to say "thanks" to Oprah Winfrey, Essence Cares and its partners (including the National Urban League, 100 Black Men of America, Inc., and YWCA), and MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership for Oprah's call to action for 1,000,000 new mentors yesterday, May 31, 2007, as part of the Essence Cares National Mentoring Movement. (Click here to see a clip of the show)

Now I don't want to pour cold water on such a gesture, but I want to point out how a few years ago we sent over 100,000 troops into war in Iraq and many of them did not have proper armor, proper training, and were led by leaders who had a poorly designed plan to fight this war.

In 1997 I was a Chicago Delegate to President's Summit for America's Future, which was held in Philadelphia. Every living US President was represented and pledges were made to mobilize volunteers to help the 13 million US kids living in poverty.

Not much has resulted because of the same lack of planning and support as we're seeing in Iraq. What will make this million volunteer mobilization any more effective than these other failed mobilizations?

If we're going to mobilize volunteers to work in this war against poverty, we need to think of the infrastructure needed to make good tutor/mentor programs available in all of the high poverty neighborhoods where they are needed. We need to overcome the funding challenges facing non profits.

It also means we need to learn to use maps, the way Generals use maps to distribute troops to all of the places where they are needed. We need to be able to point volunteers to specific zip codes, and to programs working with specific age groups, such as the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator is doing.

This means we need to be mobilizing donors who will provide consistent, flexible and on-going operating dollars to agencies in those areas who are the connecting points between kids, volunteers and a wide range of learning experiences.

This means we need to be setting up programs at universities to train people to lead such programs, who can work with youth and work with adult volunteers (who some times act like youth), as well as with donors and others who don't understand what it takes to motivate a youth and an adult volunteer to spend a few hours together each week, month after month, and year after year, so that the end result is that the youth is an adult who can take care of himself and his family, and has the skills and motivation to succeed in a 21st century Internet based world.

I've written more about this on other pages of my blog and you can review a strategy that leaders might adoptby visiting the T/MC web site.