Changing futures for youth involves changing what CEOs do

I posted this graphic on my blog in April 2013. It expresses a lot of ideas. So I thought I’d try to break it down into components, which I've done below. If you visit this blog you can see these components in a YouTube video created by one of my 2014 interns.

I feel this graphic is important to understand because if we want mentor-rich youth programs helping kids in more places move through school and into jobs we must influence what resource providers do at the same time as we're influencing what youth programs do. This requires a huge, on-going vision, and a wide range of intermediary supports.

Here is same graphic, but with numbers on different parts. In the paragraphs below I’ll show the meaning.

First, the goal of this graphic, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is to help high quality, long-term, site-based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty neighborhoods. This section of the Tutor/Mentor web library includes dozens of research articles that show the impact of poverty, indicating the potential benefits of mentor-rich programs.

Second, if we want mentor-rich programs in more high poverty neighborhoods, then we must find ways to increase the flow of needed resources to all programs, and keep this consistent for many years. To do that we need to influence what the donor and resource provider do, not just what programs do.

I’ve been following the National Mentoring Summit via a live feed for the past two days and posting comments on Twitter. There are about 800 people at the Summit, and between one-, and two-hundred subscribed to the live feed.

In one of the featured discussions yesterday, David Gregory, Host of NBC's Meet the Press, was a speaker. @davidgregory has over 1.6 million Twitter Followers. Justin Bieber @justinbieber has 49 million followers. @MENTORnational has only 3663 followers. As of yesterday @tutormentorteam has almost 1600 followers.

These are “attention gaps” we need to close and we cannot do that without more consistent, and strategic, support from business, public leaders, media and other potential resource providers.

Let’s look at this chart closer:

A tutor/mentor program supports a connection between an adult volunteer with a youth living in an area where indicators show extra adult support and learning activities are needed. NOTE: many mentoring strategies are nor primarily focused on youth living in high poverty. However, there is much research showing that for youth living in high poverty the non-school hours offer risk if not filled with positive learning activities and that there are too few resources in most neighborhoods. The Tutor/Mentor Institute's primary focus is helping mentor rich programs reach youth living in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago.

There are a wide variety of formal mentoring programs, and many youth are involved in informal mentoring. This New Report: The Mentoring Effect, shows that too few youth are engaged in formal mentoring.

This is one graphic from my web site illustrating a need to support youth for many years. On Pinterest.com you can find more graphics like this, which point to a long-term result, which is when kids have made the journey from first grade through high school, post high school learning, and into jobs with family level wages or better. Our aim is to help youth programs build strategies that support this long-term goal.

This graphic is intended to illustrate the infrastructure needed in every tutor/mentor program. Most people, including youth and volunteers, don’t see the work it takes to recruit and retain youth and volunteers, and find the operating dollars and other resources needed to build an ongoing program. See this graphic at this link.

I’ve piloted uses of maps since 1994 to illustrate the need for tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago. Without the maps donors and media focus on a few high profile programs, or a few high profile neighborhoods. You don't get a distribution of resources to all of the neighborhoods, or all of the programs, which need consistent support.

The oil well graphic indicates the need for programs to help youth from birth to work. See more maps at http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com

Most efforts to support non profits, including tutor/mentor programs, share ideas that help programs improve themselves, and their operations. This concept map shows a section of the Tutor/Mentor Web library that represents a college of resources that tutor/mentor leaders could draw from to be better at what they do.

However, most smaller programs are so overwhelmed and under financed that they can't draw from this information for on-going learning as much as they need to. This section of the library should be read by business leaders, donors and policy makers. It shows challenges facing non profits.

As the Iceberg graphic demonstrated, every program has common needs for a wide range of talent. Few have the money to hire all the talent they need or purchase the best technology and other tools needed to run a high quality business.

This is where we need to grow. Business leaders have tremendous expertise in building chains of stores operating in multiple locations. I wrote about Polk Bros recently, showing how advertising and sales promotion were used to draw customers to stores. On Pinterest I show many graphics that illustrate the role of business and professionals could take to draw needed resources to volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs all over the city. I created this “Virtual Corporate office PDF” to illustrate the way volunteer talent in many companies and industries could be mobilized and focused on supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs throughout big cities like Chicago.

If programs are consistently supported, and are constantly learning from each other, and engaging all of their supporters in efforts to constantly improve the organization’s impact, they should be able to show on their web sites many indicators of their value and impact. This pdf illustrates some of the things a “shopper” should want to see when looking at a tutor/mentor program’s web site.

Teams of volunteers from business, universities, high schools, etc. could help programs collect and share this information on web sites, and could provide some of the advertising support needed every day to encourage more people to look at these web sites and provide support to help one, or many, programs grow.

As a result of this support there should be many programs with a long-term history and the ability to posts murals like this, showing youth and volunteers who have been part of programs in the past, and who are still connected to those programs today, while helping programs provide services to the next generation of youth.

Now, when you look at this graphic, do you understand what it is showing? Can you share this with people in your own network? Take a look at this blog to see how interns have been creating visualizations and new interpretations of graphics like this. Start a project at your school, or in your church or in your tutor/mentor program, where youth and volunteers create their own interpretations, focusing on your own community and/or school neighborhood if you're not in Chicago.

Change Fortune for Youth In High Poverty

On Monday I posted a version of this graphic to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, wishing everyone share in "the Luck of the Irish".

I think cities need to create their own luck for youth living in areas with high concentrations of poverty, and fewer learning, enrichment and job training opportunities than youth in more affluent areas. How do we do that?

In the four leafs above I've put the four strategies described in this 4-part strategy map. In the presentation below, this 4-part strategy is explained by an intern from IIT who worked with me for six weeks in 2013.



If we have better information to support innovation and collective action, and to distribute needed operating resources into every high poverty neighborhood, more people can use that information to help constantly improving, mentor-rich programs reach k-16 youth in those high poverty neighborhoods.

By "constantly improving" I mean that both programs and resource providers are learning from the best work being done by others on a consistent basis and are applying these ideas to help make every tutor/mentor program in each neighborhood a world class effort. Instead of searching on Google for information showing what others are doing, this information should be aggregated in web libraries such as the one I've maintained since 1998.

This graphic is explained in this video, created by a 2014 intern from IIT.



If youth have access to more non-school support systems, they can create their own good fortune, because they will have more of the help that youth in more affluent areas have naturally available to them.

Anyone can take a role in making this strategy available to Chicago or other cities. Youth from middle school, high school and/or colleges could be creating new interpretations of this information, sharing it with adults in their own neighborhood.

If you'd like to know more about the information in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library, let's find a time to meet in Chicago, or on-line. If you're around on May 19, I encourage you to attend the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, which will be held at the Metcalfe Federal Building. Registration is open.

Luck of the Irish to all

Enjoy the day! Be safe. May good fortune find all of those who seek help in doing good in this world.

March Tutor/Mentor Newsletter - Speakers for Conference

You can now read the March 2014 Tutor/Mentor newsletter. It's full of links to research, resources, ideas, and articles that anyone can use to help building and sustain mentor-rich programs that help youth move through school and into jobs and careers. If you'd like to receive this in your email, just subscribe at this link.

Included in this newsletter is a list of speakers who I expect to present workshops at the May 19, 2014 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. You can see the list, and bios, here. A few more people are expected to confirm workshops and some of those who have confirmed may change before May 19. However, I think this is a great list and offers many reasons for people to attend the conference.

I'm pleased to announce that Becoming We the People, a non profit focused on Northwest Indiana, that has been part of conference planning since 2011, has agreed to act as fiscal agent for conference sponsorships. I offer $20 scholarships to anyone who requests them, and do not charge a fee to workshop presenters. Thus, finding some sponsors to help cover these costs, and other expenses related to the conferences and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, is really important.

If you read the newsletter and browse the links we point to you'll see a huge amount of information. The conferences are part of an on-going effort to collect and share this information with a growing number of people who need to be consistently involved in helping constantly improving tutor/mentor programs reach youth in more of the high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities, with a flow of ideas, talent and dollars that enables each program to constantly grow in what they do to help transform the lives of youth, volunteers and communities.

Graphics like this one are intended to communicate this ideas. Visit this page to see a video breaking this graphic down into individual components.

I hope you value the ideas and will share this information in your own network. If you can attend the conference in May please do. If you can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Linked in or in Google communities, then we can go deeper into this information and connect more frequently.

Young homicide victim not forgotten, and shouldn't be.

On Thursday, March 6, 2014 I read a column written by the Chicago Tribune's John Kass, telling the story of a 12 year old boy shot to death in Chicago in 2012, and of a CPS Social Worker who is trying to keep his memory alive.

This article resonated with me because I've been collecting media stories about violence, poorly performing schools, poverty, gangs, etc. for the past 20 years. While most shootings get very little attention in the media, and good news stories get even less attention, some stories get full page attention and are the focus of some of the most talented writers at Chicago's local media outlets. The three stories in this image are examples of a "don't forget, demand actions, it's up to all of us" type of headline and editorial.

When we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 the goal was to build a master database of known tutor/mentor programs, along with a library of research showing where they were most needed, and why. We started using maps to show where these programs were located, and where more were needed. We organized events, like the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences to draw people together to learn from each other, and to motivate media to write more stories that could serve as advertising to draw public interest and greater volunteer and donor support of programs in every neighborhood.

Since we had no dollars for advertising, and could not get consistent support from Mayor Daley or other city leaders, I began to develop map-stories, following media stories, so that when the media story build public interest in the problem our map stories could focus that interest on neighborhoods where the event motivating the negative news story took place. I called this "The Rest of the Story".

I did not have many ways to share these maps during the 1990s or 2000s, but I've kept them and always created a map display at every Tutor/Mentor Conference. Recently I've begun to create a web archive of map-stories. This slide show is from that archive.


Find more photos like this on Tutor/Mentor Connection


These stories are reminders that we need to do more if we're to create more opportunities for kids in these neighborhoods to connect with mentors and tutors and learning opportunities that steer them away from gangs and help them move toward jobs and careers.

As I went through my library of map stories, I also skimmed through some of the media stories I've collected. This is one from 1995, talking about how poverty impacts kids. I have many stories like this. Too many.

We're still talking about the same problems in 2014 as we were talking about in 1995. We've spent billions of dollars, yet the same problems continue to plague us.

One challenge from the past was the inability for people to connect frequently in place-based meetings where they could dig deeper into this information and build a shared commitment to actions that might have greater long-term impact. We now have the internet and social media, so more of us who care about this problem have the potential to connect and innovate new ways to build and sustain the flow of resources into every high poverty neighborhood that is needed to create more opportunities for kids in these neighborhoods.

More than a decade ago I created this strategy map to visualize leadership commitments that need to be made by hundreds of people in Chicago and other cities.

One of the links on the strategy map points to this "village map".

My goal is to put links in every node on this map, pointing to leaders in every business, faith, entertainment, media and civic sector, who have a version of the strategy map on their own web site, indicating their support of the strategy. As that list grows, so will our ability to keep memories of slain youth alive by the work we do to build systems of support in every neighborhood that are designed to prevent a repeat of such tragedies some day in the future.

I'm just one person. I have a small voice. It's a big city and a big world. I encourage more youth and adults learn to create map-stories and blog articles like this, and share them on their own media as frequently as I do. Build your own links library and include a link to my sites. Build your own Twitter and Facebook pages and let's connect.

As more people do this my voice, and yours, will become a roar.

President Obama Launches "My Brother’s Keeper Initiative"

In this White House Fact Sheet, you can read about the new initiative, titled "My Brother’s Keeper", which is a new initiative to help every boy and young man of color who is willing to do the hard work to get ahead.

This page from the Summer 1999 Tutor/Mentor Newsletter, shows that State Senator Barack Obama was a speaker at the May 1999 Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference in Chicago. I met him, shook his hand, had my picture taken and invited him to build his own understanding of strategies I'd been sharing since 1993 to help youth living in high poverty neighborhoods become part of mentor-rich programs helping them through school and into jobs and careers. I had met previously with Michelle Obama at the University of Chicago in the mid 1990s and asked for her support of Tutor/Mentor Connection through involvement of students at the University.

This is a photo from an August/September Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign press conference, held in Chicago in 2000 or 2001 when Lura Lynn Ryan, First Lady of Illinois, was honorary chair person of the campaign and Paul Vallas, CEO of Chicago Public Schools was a speaker.

Arne Duncan was Vallas' assistant in 2000 and 2001. I met with Arne at Vallas's office in 2000 and 2001 and he committed his support for Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies beyond the Vallas tenure at CPS. At that point I had no idea he would be the next CEO of CPS. I had known Arne since he was the first recipient of the Chicago Bar Foundation's Lend A Hand Award in 1994. At that time he was leading a tutor/mentor program in the Hyde Park area of Chicago.

In the fact sheet from the White House I don't see a graphic like this one, which I've been sharing since the mid 1990s to show the need for long-term support of youth in all high poverty neighborhoods. I've not seen maps and graphics like this used in many leadership initiatives, at the city, state of federal level in the 20 years that I've been sharing maps and graphics in my own print newsletters and web sites.

As the President was launching his new initiative, the Illinois Mentoring Partnership published a "State of Mentoring in Illinois" Report. Download the full report, here.

This graphic is from a page showing challenges mentoring programs face, with the number one challenge being lack of consistent funding.

I've been doing surveys of tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region since the late 1990s. This graphic is from a summary of a survey done at Tutor/Mentor Conferences. It shows that the most important needs were "people" and "resources". In this 2009 blog article results of a newer survey show the same need for funding and talent.

I've been sharing graphics like this for more than a decade, showing the common needs of all tutor/mentor programs and the need for programs in all high poverty neighborhoods.

In the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC Library, and on the library at Scribd.com I've shared short, illustrated strategy essays, showing how leaders from every sector need to be consistently innovating ways to connect needed resources to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other cities.

One of these is titled ROLE OF LEADERS. Another is titled "NO GENERAL GOES TO WAR WITHOUT A MAP"

A new presentation showing how resource providers need to be equally involved in building high quality tutor/mentor programs is available, with a video done by a 2014 intern to break this down into easier-to-understand pieces.

Mr. President, we don't need a new program, we need new commitments. We need you and other leaders, including mentoring partnerships in every state, to adopt leadership and marketing strategies that support existing programs who already work with youth of color, both boys and girls, so that they can stay connected, constantly growing to be great, and expand where it makes sense. Teach leaders and supporters of new programs draw from an on-line library of ideas, aggregations of links to existing programs and research, etc., such as the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library, to launch new programs where our maps and data show a need that is not currently being met with an existing program.

One commitment would be for you and other leaders to spend just one hour a week browsing articles on my web site, and following the links to other web sites that I point to. Don't delegate this. The power of the Internet is that you and every other leader can be directly involved with information, and with the people trying to put this information to work.

Make this commitment and pass it on to the next President, and the one after that so such a commitment is consistent and grows for the next 20 years. With such a commitment a growing number of youth of color, born in 2014, will be in college, vocational schools, the military and/or in jobs by 2034.

Without this commitment our grandchildren will be able to search Google (or whatever replaces it) and find a long list of Presidential announcements of new programs that over time fail to deliver because of a lack of consistent funding, talent and other resources required in every program location.

Could this be learning activity in non-school program?

I get my ideas by learning from others. It's an on-going process that I started over 40 years ago. It's been enhanced over the past 16 years by my active engagement with others via the Internet. I've been part of a Deeper Learning MOOC #DLMOOC since January 20, 2014 and in my email every day I get 10 to 20 posts from other participants. I can't look at them all, but I try to look at some.

Thus, today, this video was posted, showing a learning activity taking place in 2007. With so much emphasis on STEM, critical thinking, problem solving, etc. this seems like a great activity that could be taking places in a school, or in a non-school program.



Between 2000 and 2011 a partnership existed between Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin and Cabrini Connections, the tutor/mentor program in Chicago that I led from 1992 to mid 2011. The main event in this partnership was a three-day summer workshop organized by grad students and faculty at Edgewood College, which was presented at the Cabrini Connections facility in Chicago. This blog article describes the 2011 event.

This story from 2004 is one showing the Edgewood Collge program. It describes the planning process. "In collaboration with Cabrini Connections, a tutoring and mentoring agency, Edgewood students help youths evaluate their lives and develop long-term goals. Cabrini-Green children then travel to Edgewood College, where they take part in activities meant to guide them toward a brighter future."

If a college can develop this type of program and keep it going for over a decade, why can't other colleges duplicate the program described in this video, and partner with youth organizations in high poverty neighborhoods, making it a summer learning activity, or a year round learning activity?

While it would be great to think this might become part of the curriculum of every Chicago Public School serving youth in high poverty neighborhoods, "Hell might freeze over before that is a reality." Volunteers from businesses and colleges can bring this learning into these neighborhoods by by-passing the bureaucracy of schools and the education establishment and making it part of innovative non-school youth serving organizations.

If you're already doing this please offer a workshop in the May 19, 2014 (and future) Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference held in Chicago so you can help inspire others to duplicate this effort.

Were you volunteer tutor/mentor in 1980s? Still involved?

This pin was given to myself and other volunteers in the early 1980s. It recognized volunteers who had given five to 10 years of consecutive service the Montgomery Ward-Cabrini/Green Tutoring Program in Chicago, where we were working with Cabrin-Green elementary school youth.

There might have been 20 to 25 people who received these pins. It was only awarded in one or two years. Mine showed 10 years of service. I had joined the tutoring program in 1973 as a tutor, then became part of the leadership committee the next year, and the volunteer leader the following year. When I took the lead in 1975 we were starting each year with around 100 pairs of volunteers and youth, but the number was down to about half of that by the end of the year.

At that time 90% of the volunteers were employees at the Montgomery Ward Corporate office and Catalog Distribution Center in Chicago.

By 1990 we were up to 300 pairs of volunteers and youth. More than 80% of those who started in the fall continued all year and with constant recruitment of replacements, we ended the year with more volunteers than what we started with. On 10% of the volunteers were from Montgomery Ward. After the Catalog operation closed in the early 1980s many volunteers went to other companies, then began to bring co-workers from those companies to volunteer.

I continued to lead the tutoring program at Wards until the fall of 1992 (we converted it to the non profit Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc. in 1990. It was renamed Tutoring Chicago in the past couple of years). In the fall of 1992 I created Cabrini Connections, to help kids who aged out of the original program after 6th grade have a similar support system to help them through high school. At the same time, we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to help similar programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago.

I led Cabrini Connections until mid 2011. I'm still leading the Tutor/Mentor Connection, but under the structure of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

One of the other volunteers who received an award pin along with myself was Allen Tyson. He started tutoring a few years before me. He is still tutoring, now with Tutoring Chicago.


When I became a volunteer in 1973 I was assigned to work with a fourth grade boy named Leo. That's him with me in this picture. We're still connected today via Facebook, over 40 years later.

I'm connected to dozens of youth (who are now adults) and volunteers (who are now older) who I met between 1973 and 2011. I'd like to find a way to build a "great reunion" on the Internet, so more of those who were part of these programs in the past would reconnect.

One of the things I focus on every day is finding ways to empower some of those who have benefited from their participation so they will become leaders who share the vision I've shared in these blog articles and who will carry this forward in future years when I'm no longer here to provide that leadership.

Jefferson Award for Public Service - 32 years later

On February 11 I was honored to be featured in this article on the blog of the Jefferson Awards for Public Service page.

I received this award in 1982, when it was the Chicago SunTimes Jefferson Award. You can see the newspaper story from then at this link.

I've received other awards since then, such as in 1999 when I received the Publisher's Clearing House Good as Gold Award on the Dec. 31 telecast of the Montel Jones TV show.

The best rewards for the work I've done have come from students and volunteers testimonials of how much a difference the programs I've led have had in their lives, or how much help the Tutor/Mentor Connection has offered to their own program-building efforts. I met my wife through the program at Montgomery Ward thus my two kids are also one of the unexpected rewards of doing this work.

I've never gotten rich. In fact, I've never earned as much since 1990 as I was earning in my last year with the advertising department at Montgomery Ward. However, I have a wealth of experience that I try to share via this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site. And a vast network of people who I've met and learned from, just as they have learned from me.

I've been putting as much of my ideas as I can on these web sites. I've also been working with interns to help create new interpretations of these ideas. Visit this site and see new work added every six months by interns from IIT and South Korea, and from other universities. Visit this page to see more work done by interns.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me do this work and thanks to those like the Jefferson Awards for Public Service who help us share our story with thousands of others.

Following Bad News in Media with "Rest of Story"

If you read the Chicago Tribune on February 7, 2014 you might have seen this story. Note where it says "there have been at least 11 other shootings withing four blocks since June 2011". Have you seen any marches, or editorials, or visits by the Mayor mobilizing resources to change the conditions that cause these acts of violence?

I created a "Rest of the Story" strategy in 1993 when I was launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Recognizing that I had no advertising dollars to draw regular attention to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, I felt that a strategy that followed media stories could build public awareness and lead more people to be involved in helping mentor-rich programs grow in more places.

On the Mapping for Justice blog you can see many past map stories. On this section of this blog you can see more.

I think map stories like this could be created by student advocates, working in middle and high schools, or in faith groups and local youth organizations. The week #3 topic on the Deeper Learning MOOC #DLMOOC has focused on internships engaging youth in real world learning.

Imagine a steam of student/volunteers taking ownership of this process.

Once a student recognizes that a new story has been given feature attention in the local media, meaning thousands of people have been reached by the story, the address for where the incident happened is given to a map maker, who uses the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and other on-line resources to create a series of maps.

This map shows where the shooting took place, at the corner of Pratt Ave and Clark Street in the Rogers Park area of Chicago's North Side. It also shows demographic information, locations of poorly performing schools (from 2008) and locations of any non-school tutor/mentor programs in the area (green stars) based on available data in the Tutor/Mentor library.

This map uses data provided by the Social IMPACT Research Center at Heartland Alliance to show the number of youth age 6 to 17 below the poverty line in each Chicago Community area. While the map only shows one area of poverty concentration above 25% it shows nearly 6,000 youth in the three surrounding community areas who might benefit from being part of well-organized, mentor-rich non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs.

This next map shows assets in the area, such as banks, universities, hospitals, faith groups, etc. who should have comprehensive strategies in place to reduce poverty, and violence, in the area, because they share the geography. They are part of the neighborhood.

A team of youth and volunteers could create maps, and create a story like this, post it on a blog as I have done, then use social media to demand that the adult leaders in the community come together to make more and better youth programs available. As they do this they can point to information in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library that can be used to help innovate new strategies to support these programs.

They can also point to online learning events, such as the Deeper Learning MOOC that is taking place now.

They can even organize their own GooglePlus community and learning MOOC to share ideas of ways youth can be leaders in drawing attention to problems in their communities, and in drawing people together to learn new ways to solve those problems.

As they do this they can learn to create maps such as this one used to analyze participation in the Deeper Learning MOOC. If you zoom into this map you'll see that very few people from the Chicago region are involved. If you look at the map showing participation in past Tutor/Mentor Conferences, you'll see that very few people from business, philanthropy, media and/or government are involved. Future blog articles and outreach can target these groups so that over time, more and more people who need to be involved in helping youth in the community are participating in a wide range of actions.

Who could lead this effort? A map of Catholic schools supported by the Big Shoulders Fund shows schools in the Rogers Park area where teams of students, working with volunteer support, could create articles like this. Any of the Chicago Public Schools in the area could also support such activities as part of service learning, or as part of deeper learning and internships.

If this Rest of the Story activity is adopted in schools throughout the Chicago region, and in other cities, the neighborhood can unleash a new generation of talent and leadership needed to draw consistent attention to a problem that only gets random coverage in traditional media. It can unleash a new generation of leaders who understand how the Internet can be used for network building, learning and collective actions.

I posted this story on Scribd at this link. You can see fifty other stories I've posted since October 2011. Collectively these have been read over 80,000 readers. Imagine how many more readers there might be if there were collections of "Rest of the Story" articles posted on hundreds of sites, created by young people and adults who want to turn bad news into better news.

Network Building - See example on I-Open Blog

I've written many articles about network building, collaboration, learning and complex problems, and how the ideas we share on web sites and blogs have little impact if too few people are looking at them.

I first started blogging in 2005 as part of a Non-Profit Blog Exchange. You can see my first articles here. I've done this consistently since then as a way of expanding my network, learning new ideas, and of attracting more readers to the ideas on my own blog.

Thus, I'm pleased to point to an article titled ACCELERATE ECONOMIC PROSPERITY IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, posted on the I-Open blog. The leader of I-Open is Betsey Merkle, who I first connected with on Facebook in 2011. Betsy's base of operations is Cleveland, Ohio. However, through the internet she reaches people throughout the world. She is one of the most active network-builders I've met in the way she is constantly using social media to draw attention to people she has met, and to connect those people with each other.

I wrote this article about Network growth and this article about Unleashing Your Personal Power to illustrate the work that must be done if we're to attract millions of people, and thousands of leaders and decision makers, to the ideas we share on blogs and web sites which represent a "university of ideas" focused on closing the gaps between poverty and affluence by creating and sustaining mentor-rich support systems in thousands of high poverty neighborhoods of the US and other countries.

Without others sharing what I write, or me pointing to what they write, few of us have the advertising dollars, or celebrity visibility, to draw needed attention to these ideas on a single day, or a consistent basis.

I hope you'll read the articles I write, follow the links, and share this information with people in your own network. That's how movements grow and how change can take place in this world of many problems.

Use maps to mobilize community assets to support tutor/mentor programs

In 1993 when I started building a data base of Chicago volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs the goal was to find ways to increase the reach and frequency of stories that would show the need for these programs in high poverty areas and would draw consistent volunteer and donors support to every program, in every neighborhood. Since I had no dollars for advertising or Public Awareness, one strategy was to create map-stories following news reports of negative news. With these maps we'd show any of the tutor/mentor programs in our directory, with contact information, and we'd show a list of some of the assets in the neighborhood (banks, insurance companies, faith groups, colleges, hospitals, etc.) who should be working together to support the growth of high quality non-school programs in the map area because they are invested in the same geography!

Building map stories like this required the aid of a skilled map maker, along with a computer, software, etc. I've never had the money to have such people working with us consistently, although in the Map Gallery you can see maps made between 2008 and 2011 because of funding for a part time Map Maker that had become available. At this link you can see a couple other maps made between 1996 and 2000 by part time staff and volunteers. I have quite a large archive of these.

However, making the map was just the first step. We also needed to find a way to get the map into the newspapers, or in front of potential volunteers and donors and tutor/mentor program leaders in different neighborhoods. We did not have much money for that, but did include maps in a printed Directory that we mailed to about 400 locations once each year.

I also displayed a set of maps at every Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference held since May 1994.

In 2008-09 I was able to build an on-line, interactive version of the Directory, which anyone could use to make their own map stories. If you browse past articles I've written you'll find many examples. If you read this article you'll see instructions for making a map. This shows how students could make maps that can be used to follow negative news stories.

Unfortunately, in 2009 we ran out of money to continue to upgrade the technology and update the content on the maps, except for program information, thus some of the information has been out-of-date. That's why I'm thrilled to say that one of the Interns from IIT who has been working with me since Jan 8, 2014 has updated the bank section of the assets maps, deleting banks that have closed and adding six more to the list. You can read the full story of that update here.

I think maps are a powerful visual tool that can be used to point people and resources to all of the places in a city or country where a problem persists. This map from the Program Locator shows all of the banks now included.

Zoom into any section of the city and you can create a map view including banks, faith groups, hospitals, etc. who all share the same geography and who should be working together to solve a problem, because of their own investment in the neighborhood.. Students in local high schools or non-school programs could be creating map stories like this and using them to mobilize adult support for extended learning, internships, jobs, etc. Volunteers in faith groups and businesses could do the same. Anyone can create a map and tell a story. They can also show assets in a map-area. They can even create maps of political districts and use them to evaluate the effectiveness of any elected official.

However, there is a cost to doing this work and since 2011 I've not had a non profit structure to raise money via grants and charity donations and I've not been able to build a business plan that would show potential investors a return-on investment that would attract needed capital. Thus, I'm dependent on volunteers to help. There is much work still to be done to update all the sections of the Program Locator, keep it working every day, and teach people to use the maps in their own planning and leadership.

If you feel this map strategy has value and you want to help, you can send financial support at this page. Or you can introduce yourself to me on Twitter, Linked in and/or Facebook and we can talk of ways we might work together.

Interns as network builders

This video is one of four short videos created by SUNJOONG YOO, and intern from South Korea and IIT, to encourage more viewers to look at ideas shared on Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web sites. Take a look!



In many articles on this blog I talk about how non profits have too few advertising dollars to draw larger numbers of visitors to their web sites, or to information that educates business, philanthropy, policy makers, media and others about ways they could support the growth of long-term tutor/mentor programs reaching k-12 youth in high poverty areas. The videos and visualizations done by interns working with me in Chicago for six week periods in Jan-Feb and May-June are examples of work that could be done by youth in thousands of locations, as part of their own learning and skill building, and as part of a larger effort aimed at generating more consistent support for youth tutoring, mentoring programs in more places.

Internships and career education are the topic of this week's Deeper Learning MOOC (#DLMOOC). The reading material includes articles like this, where a programs deeper goals are described as "Finally, the LTI is not simply about the product that is created or the service that is rendered. On a deeper level, it is about teenagers learning to become mature, thoughtful adults."

If youth in your organization create their own PSAs aimed at drawing your own volunteers, leaders, donors into an on-line learning space, they can point to the same materials as my interns are pointing to.