OnTheTable2015 gathers concerned citizens today in Chicago

Today the Chicago Community Trust is hosting its second annual OnTheTable event. I hope all who gather to discuss issues important to Chicago will use resources like the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site and blogs like this one to build a deeper understanding of issues and strategies that reach youth and families in all high poverty areas of the Chicago region.

At last Friday's Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, Mark Duhon, Executive Director of Highsight, led an OnTheTable discussion. Participants were encouraged to host table discussions, focusing on questions such as:

* What is your organization's ultimate goal for the young people you serve?
* What are you doing well to help accomplish this goal?
* What can others do to help you (volunteers, donors, etc. from business, faith groups, colleges)?

Participant feedback was collected and will be posted on Tutor/Mentor blogs and social media, and shared with the larger #OnTheTable discussions.

I wrote about the 2014 OnTheTable event last May with an article titled "Follow up to On The Table2014 – 5 years, 10 years, 15 years."

On April 27, I shared this graphic, from a 1993 newspaper story, calling for a "master battle plan" to address poverty and its many related causes.

Last week I shared this graphic, urging leaders who organize events that bring diverse groups of people together, to build participation maps that show who is participating and where they come from, just as I've been trying to do to show who has been participating in the conferences I've hosted since 1993.

If you're one of the thousands of people participating in #onthetable2015, I hope you'll read this article and browse others I've written since 2005, then add this to your own library and planning process. I'd be happy to give you a guided tour and become your coach. Connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIN.

New Super Hero, Avengers Movie. Read about role of Heros.

Millions of people will be watching the new super hero Avengers movie this month. I wish just a fraction of that were engaged in deeper learning on ways to reduce poverty and inequality in this country and around the world. Here's an article I wrote in 2012 when the last episode in this series was released.

The message applies now as much as it did then.

Report looks at Tutor/Mentor Conferences since 1994

I've been hosting Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago since 1994. The first had 70 participants. The largest was in 1999 with 350. The last few have had 80-100. The one Friday may be lowest attended.

The goal of the conferences and the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) has been to bring people together to share ideas and learn ways to build and sustain mentor-rich support systems that help youth in high poverty neighborhoods move through school and into work.

Since I began organizing conferences many others in Chicago, and around the country have begun doing their own events, focusing on the same problem, or different parts of the same problem.

I've been trying to develop tools that would visualize and map participation in my conferences, to demonstrate that they should receive financial support, and to convince others to use the same network analysis in their own events.

In 2010 a graduate of DePaul University created some maps and blog-articles showing participation in 2008 and 2009 conferences. You can see her articles here.

This spring a team of students from different parts of the country adopted the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC as their client in an Information Visualization MOOC (#IVMOOC) hosted by Indiana University. Here's the final report from the work they were able to do in such a short period of time. On this page you can see how goals for this project were communicated.

The data for the past 42 conferences has now been cleaned, and while my IVMOOC team hopes to continue working with this, I'm inviting students/faculty from universities anywhere in the world to also work with this data. As the analysis of the 2008-09 conferences shows, you can look at this information in many different ways and create quite a few articles making sense of the visualizations.

The IVMOOC team looked at this data from a spatial perspective, using GIS mapping applications, as well as from a social network analysis perspective. This demonstrates a wide range of opportunities for future researchers and writers.

My goal is that as you do this you will convince others who host conferences and large gatherings that focus on poverty, race, inequality, workforce development, health disparities, etc. to apply these tools for their own events. Furthermore, instead of looking for organizers in Chicago, look for organizers in your own city.

Imagine a web site where maps like these from New York, London, LA, Houston, Paris and many other cities who struggle with these same issues are aggregated, so that people who attend different events in each city can easily connect with each other, or can connect with people and ideas from different cities.

Analysis of participation over multiple years should (hopefully) show show more people getting involved, and staying involved, and more support in a greater number of places where poverty is the root cause of many other problems. I hope this work inspires others to get involved with this work, and to share work they are already doing.

November 2015 update. Another volunteer has looked at the conference data, and using a mapping tool called Tableau, has created a map showing participation in all past conferences. See it here. This has a lot of features that we're continuing to explore.

Building Strong Programs in ALL High Poverty Areas. Why is this so Hard?

From my 40 year involvement in volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs I've come to believe that well organized, non-school programs that connect workplace volunteers with inner city youth in ongoing, supported tutoring, mentoring and learning, is a good thing to do.

I've been using maps since 1994 to focus attention on all of the high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago where well organized programs are most needed. I use these in visualizations that illustrate that to have well-organized programs we need to help them get a constant flow of talent, ideas, technology, volunteers and operating dollars.

In the 1990s and through 2002 I communicated these ideas, and strategies via printed newsletters. Then I ran short of money. Since then I've communicated largely via social media, blogs and email newsletters to a small list.

Since I never have had advertising or significant Public Relations dollars, I've developed a "Rest of the Story" strategy that follows negative news, with map-stories, intended to show the level of poverty in the neighborhood where a shooting or school story took place, and the location of existing tutor/mentor programs in that neighborhood. My message was "support existing programs" and "help new programs form where needed".

Interns from Chicago universities have helped me communicate these ideas, via visualizations, videos and their own blog articles. This graphic was created by an intern (see more) and shows that anyone reading this can invite the people they know to support tutor/mentor programs all over the city.

This is all part of a 4-part information based problem solving strategy. This graphic is one that shows the four parts of the strategy. All four parts need to be consistently supported, and can be duplicated in any city.

I've created graphics like the one below to show four key times each year when we all might be "singing the same song" and uniting our voices in a mobilization of attention and resources for youth serving organizations in an entire city, state or the whole country. In between these four times there are numerous other opportunities where individual organizations and networks can be contributing to the "noise making" that is needed to get more people involved in this effort.

This only works if a) someone in a city is creating maps that show where people need help; and b) someone also is creating, and mapping, a directory of organizations that provide specific types of help (e.g. tutoring, mentoring, tutor/mentor, arts, STEM, etc.), and also showing what age group those programs focus on. While each individual program has their own marketing and fund raising (some much more than others), not every program is as good at attracting needed resources. Not every neighborhood can attract workplace volunteers and donors as easily as some are able to. These are problems to discuss and overcome, but first we need to be coming together to talk about them.

So why don't I see other people writing about strategies that mobilize resources for all programs in all neighborhoods? (Do a Google search for "tutor mentor" then look at the images. Do the same for others who are "visible" leaders in this movement. See if they are using maps and visualizations that focus on entire city support systems.) Everyone in Chicagoland has a stake in the future of our city, and addressing poverty and inequality of opportunity is an activity we all need to be involved in.

We need to start doing this now, and with urgency, before some radical says "instead of burning your own neighborhood, why not burn their neighborhood".

I keep inviting people who care about what I'm writing to gather at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences I host in Chicago. The next is this Friday, May 8 and seats are still available.

However, I know that there are many other events that compete for "rear-ends in the seats" so I also focus on how we can connect and share ideas and talk strategy on the Internet. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and host a Tutor/Mentor Forum. I'm also available for one-on-one conversations with any one interested.

If I could present ideas to CEOs, what would I share?

I have produced a huge library of ideas that anyone can use to develop strategies that help kids in poverty move through school and into work. Many of these articles focus on the business community because that's a source of talent, ideas, technology needed to support the growth of volunteer-based youth serving organizations. It's also a source of role models to expand aspirations for kids living in high poverty areas, who don't have people in their family or community modeling the many different careers youth might aspire to.

On Thursday, I attended a Summer Jobs Program summit hosted by JPMorganChase. Their Skills At Work web site provides a wide range of information showing the skills gap and why leaders in every industry should build a strategy that helps "pull kids through school and into jobs".

I added this link to a section of my web library with similar articles. I wonder how many people in business will read these as part of the Research & Development they do to support their employee engagement strategies.

I had a dream last night that CEOs were looking at information I'd provided, in a thick document. I woke up saying, "that's too much".

What one, or two documents might I want them to read?

This "Role of Leaders" would be the first document. Why? First, without CEO commitment, not much happens. Second, busy CEOs need to appoint a "get it done" person to take charge of their efforts. Such people look for opportunities while traditional HR and Philanthropy managers work with scarcity, and limited budgets. They are often forced to look for reasons to say "no".

Role of Leaders - How CEOs can help inner city youth from birth to work by Daniel F. Bassill

While the "Role of Leaders" pdf includes many graphics, it does not include the Strategy Map shown below.

CEOs who put their name in the blue box at the top of this map are making a long-term commitment to help kids in poverty neighborhoods move through school and into careers. They are encouraging other CEOs to get involved, just as Chief Crusaders of the United Way fund raising campaigns do. They are encouraging involvement of employee talent, not just manpower. They are looking at year-to-year progress that they have made, not just at what their non profit partners and local schools have made.

CEOS who embrace the "Role of Leaders" and this Strategy Map are encouraging teams of employees to do the learning and research needed to support constantly improving engagement strategies and effective on-going uses of company resources in all places where they do business, not just in their home office city.

We could count the number of CEOs in every industry, in every city, who commit to this strategy, and give recognition and awards to those who do it better than their peers each year. We could expand this to political and faith leaders, celebrities and others who are leaders in their own sectors, who also need to adopt this thinking.

Ten or fifteen years from now the world for youth now living in concentrated poverty would be different, if the list of CEOs were growing every year.

If this makes sense to you, please share it with CEOs who you may know.

Avoid Riots. Address Poverty, Jobs

Yesterday, I attended a Summer Employment Summit hosted by JPMorganChase, who has made a $250 million commitment to closing the skills gap. I encourage you to visit their web site, and download the "Building Skills Through Summer Jobs" publication.

Among the three recommendations in this report were 1) Strengthen Infrastructure and Connections among Programs; and 2) Deepen Private Sector involvement.

If you've followed this blog, or click into some of the tabs on the left, you'll see that their recommendations are what I've been focusing on for the past 20 years.

This graphic is from a Total Quality Mentoring (TQM) chart I created in the 1990s to show how volunteers from different industries should be part of tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood. Such programs depend on proactive support from the business community, using their own advertising and talent to draw volunteers into programs and help them stay involved for multiple years.

I've been writing about the skills gap since the mid 2000s. Here's a recent article. To get business strategically involved I created a study guide, and encourage companies to think about how volunteer involvement strengthens their current workforce, while building a future workforce and customer base.

Mentoring was mentioned over, and over in yesterday's meeting as a valuable support for youth, and one leader talked about workforce development as something that should be starting in elementary school, as this "mentoring to careers" graphic emphasizes.

I've hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months with a goal of bring people together to share ideas, build relationships and draw attention to tutor/mentor programs all over the Chicago region. The next is a week from today, Friday, May 8 and seats are still available.

This graphic show the new book by Robert Putham, titled "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis". I wrote about it here. If you're concerned about the Opportunity Gap, Poverty, Race Relations, Education or Workforce Development make the Tutor/Mentor Conference one of the meeting places on your annual agenda. Make this blog and other information on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web library part of your regular reading.

After the Riots. Do the Planning.

Since 1994 I've been following media stories that focus on violence, poor schools, inequality and police violence with stories that focus on the planning needed to build and sustain "birth to work" solutions in high poverty neighborhoods throughout the city. With the weekend riots in Baltimore, I want to emphasize this again.

Do the planning.

Here are some reminders.

In 1992, the Los Angeles riots were the featured headline, following the police beating of Rodney King. In one of the follow up articles, Jonathan Peterson of the Los Angeles Times, wrote "L.A. Riots' Wake-up Call Fell Mostly on Deaf Ears. He quoted Stuart Eizenstat saying 'We are not very good as a country in dealing with long term problems, except when they present themselves as a crisis.'

In a follow up, shown in a Nov. 1, 1992 Chicago SunTimes, article, Peterson was quoted as saying "Many Americans hoped that, some how, the stubborn dilemmas of crime and poverty that so dehumanize urban life would be tackled with a renewed public will. Yet, except for a flurry of local efforts, nothing much has happened."

I combined these quotes with this August 1993 Chicago SunTimes story, which leads off with a statement saying "Chicago neighborhoods that were poor 20 years ago are even more entrenched in poverty today because the city lacks a comprehensive battle plan".

This article concludes "While Chicago has “had all these sincere people making good efforts, one group working on poverty, one on education reform, one on community policing, these problems are too interwoven and too immense. The city needs all anti-poverty efforts “at the same table”.

Here's another story, from 1997 where Ariana Huffington writes "We can give ourselves a cozy feeling of cheaply acquired nobility by apologizing for past injustices. Or we can stop patting ourselves on the back and cross the tracks top the other side of town to take small, concrete, unglamorous steps to end present-day suffering.”

I included the reminders from 1992 with both of these. My media file contains dozens of stories showing the problems caused by intense poverty and lack of consistent leadership and commitment.

I've used this graphic often, to show the need for leaders and citizens to do "deeper learning" as part of a planning and action process. See it in this 2007 article ....written 8 years ago!

I first used this graphic in a 2012 article. It shows a planning process that could be used by leaders in any community. Note that Step 7 focuses on building and maintaining public support. I think this step keeps getting skipped as we talk about responses to stories about violence, police brutality, etc.

I've been trying to bring people together, and build continuous focus on these issues since 1994. I created this presentation in 1998 following my participation in the 1997 President's Summit for America's Future. I've never been able to build, or sustain, consistent support for this strategy in Chicago. However, any leader, in any other city could adopt these ideas, as a "fresh, new approach" and perhaps 10 years from now report on successes made in that city.

If you're interested in these ideas, or getting acquainted, I encourage you to attend the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference that I'm hosting in Chicago on May 8. Registration fees are minimal. Bring a group and I'll give you a deal. See http://www.tutormentorconference.org for details.

Your Zip Code Should not Determine your Future

Great video shared by Generation All today.

Reading "Our Kids" book by Robert Putnam? Join discussion

I posted articles about Robert Putnam's new book, "Our Kids" the American Dream in Crisis" in three March 2015 articles, starting here.

Bryan Alexander is leading a discussion of this book, chapter by chapter, starting here. I encourage you to join in. As you do, refer back to my own articles that focus on actions individuals, corporations, faith groups and political leaders need to take to help close the opportunity gaps.

For instance "mentoring" is mentioned as a solution, and faith communities are encouraged to take a lead. I focus on volunteer based tutoring and mentoring as part of organized programs operating in high poverty neighborhoods. It's the programs that make one-on-one connections possible, and make connections to other forms of learning and experience also possible.

I started following Putnam several years ago after reading his book, titled "Bowling Alone". I see mentoring as a form of "bridging social capital". The positive impact grows over time and is enhanced with organized programs make a wide range of mentors available to youth, and keep the youth and volunteers connected for multiple years.

Building the flow of talent and resources to make good programs available in more places should be part of the discussion when reading "Our Kids" and similar books.

Creating Learning Orgs to Solve Complex Problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mapping Philanthropy - BMA Funders Map

If you've followed my articles you'll see that I'm passionate about mapping data that supports the growth of mentor-rich, volunteer based tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in high poverty areas. This graphic shows a the home page of the BMA Funders mapping platform. It's an innovative, interactive map, showing funding of programs that "offer Black men and boys in the U.S. greater access to the structural supports and opportunities needed to thrive. "

I encourage you to get to know this platform and learn to use it. At the same time, read the article I wrote at the Mapping for Justice blog, showing how this compares to the Tutor/Mentor Program locator map platform that I've been developing since the early 2000s.

I have been aggregating links to program locators and mapping platforms for more than a decade, with the goal that anyone building one of these would borrow ideas from others who are doing similar work. Better yet they might collaborate on efforts to secure funding, and technology talent, to help each other build the best platforms possible.

Finally, they might also collaborate on enlisting students from high schools, colleges, faith groups and existing youth tutor/mentor programs, to be story tellers, using the maps and the data to educate policy makers, donors and other volunteers so funding reaches every poverty neighborhood, and supports a wide range of needed youth and family supports.

If you're interested in helping me, or learning from my 20 years of experience, let's connect.

Be Part of the Tradition. Tutor/Mentor Conference First held in 1994

In January 1994 a survey identified 120 organizations in the Chicago area who offers various forms of non-school, volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring. The survey included two questions related to 'how much contact do you have with peers and do you want more' and 'would you come to a conference'. 80% of respondents said there is "some need or a great deal of need" for increased contact. When asked, "How likely is it that you would attend a city-wide conference with other Tutoring/Mentoring providers for minimal or no fee?", 68% said they were were "very likely to attend" and an additional 22% were "somewhat likely to attend" See survey responses.

So a first conference was held in May 1994. 70 people attended and the first printed Tutor/Mentor Chicago Programs Directory was distributed. Feedback was enthusiastic, so a second conference was held in November 1994. 200 people attended and the conference has been held every six months since then.

This video shows what past participants have said about the conference.

Conference Capacity from Cabrini Connections on Vimeo.

In 2011 a DePaul University graduate created network maps, showing participation of organizations in the 2008 and 2009 conferences. I'm part of a 2015 Information Visualization MOOC (#IVMOOC) being hosted by Indiana University, and a team of students is now looking at all 42 conferences to create similar participation maps. See more here.

I've been writing articles about network building for many years, showing how important this is, and seeking funders/investors who would support my own efforts.

The Tutor/Mentor Leadership & Networking Conferences are part of a 40-year effort at building networks of support for youth via non-school tutor/mentor programs operating in high poverty neighborhoods. The next is Friday, May 8, 2015 and I hope you'll attend, or encourage others to attend.

However, I hope you'll also check back to see the network maps that are created to show the past 42 Tutor/Mentor Conferences. My goal is that others who host events that gather dozens, or hundreds, of people and focus on poverty, inequality, education, violence, health, workforce development and democracy, will begin to build participant mapping into their own events and that they will share their maps in public space, showing who is participating, how participation grows and who still needs to be participating.

Such maps can become a link between people who are now working in separate silos, but toward the same goals. They can be an accountability tool, showing the year-to-year success event organizers have in attracting key participants, and keeping them involved. They can also be an accountability tool motivating those who need to be participating, but currently don't show up, to get more involved.

Here's an example:

Look at more conference maps to expand your understanding of what's possible using maps.

Then look at this Talent Map The conference maps show who attended, by category. You can quickly see that business, political groups, funders, media and many other sectors represented on my maps have not been attending the Tutor/Mentor Conferences. That's a problem for me, and for kids in Chicago.

However, it might not be a problem for Chicago if other organizers, were able to show participation maps for their events, indicating that the people not attending my conferences are attending their events.

So far, I don't know of anyone who is doing this. Thus, how do we know if the "village" is completely represented in efforts to help end poverty, provide greater opportunity, and solve other related, complex problems that we face in Chicago?

If you're interested in talking with me about these ideas, or inviting me to be part of your planning, let's find time to connect.

America needs central-city and suburban residents to unite in a new coalition to support shared prosperity.

I have been using maps since 1994 to show places in Chicago where people live in concentrated poverty. My efforts have aimed to engage people from beyond poverty in deeper learning that builds their own involvement in solutions to poverty, as solutions that affect the future of their own kids and grand-kids.

This quote "America needs central-city and suburban residents to unite in a new coalition to support shared prosperity." is part of a long article titled "Philanthropy’s Misguided Ideas for Fixing Ghetto Poverty: The Limits of Free Markets and Place-Based Initiatives"

In the past month I've posted several articles focused on closing the opportunity gap, and referring to a new book by Robert Putnam, titled "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis".

I encourage you to read these articles. Share them with the volunteers in your tutor/mentor programs. Share them with family, fiends, church members. Encourage them to form study groups and engage others.

Short term results might be to support existing tutor/mentor programs, so more volunteers get involved and more kids are served. Additional efforts might result in new programs being created where none now exist.

However, the long-term effort aims to create a coalition with a vision for a future America and world where prosperity is shared and opportunity is available for all.

Turning the Pope's message into Action Plan

As Christians and Jews celebrate this religious holiday I add my own hope for peace in the world, at home, and in the hearts of men and women. I'm thrilled by Pope Francis and his emphasis on the poor. This Wall Street Journal article is one of many that you can read to see his impact. Here's an article I wrote in 2013.

A first step in reducing poverty and the opportunity gap is for highly visible leaders to draw attention to the problem, and call on the rich and privileged to be a greater part of the solution. However, the next step is for leaders to map how we get from where we are now (here) to where we want to be in the future (there).

This PDF is one that I hope Christians, Jews and people of other faiths will share in their congregations. Form study groups to understand this. Then implement the strategies so a growing percent of every congregation is growing their involvement in activities that make more and better non-school tutoring, mentoring, learning organizations and safe spaces available to youth in big cities of the US and the world.

Network Building. Role of Faith Community by Daniel F. Bassill

This is one of many strategy and idea articles I've posted in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library and written about on my blogs.

Start a study group. Read these. Discuss them in groups. Come to the May 8 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago and connect with others who already lead tutor/mentor programs, or who are trying to start new programs.

Create your own maps to show what congregations may already be hosting programs and what congregations have study groups, or marketing programs, to engage members, and the places where they work, in efforts that help programs grow throughout the Chicago region, or in any other urban area.

On the next major religious celebration, create your own blog and show your own maps and blueprints for getting from "here to there".