What comes after the election?

We lost. America lost. What's at risk? You may have heard of Project 2025, the radical right agenda to reshape America.  This site was created by comic book artists and writers to help people better understand what's in Project 2025.  Take a look.  These are things we need to fear and fight against in the coming years.

However, there's a battle that has been going on far longer.  

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on for the past 50 years is related to economic justice. If we help kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs and careers, and support networks, that enable them to live and raise their own children where ever they want, we do much to create economic justice. 

Since 2005 I've created a library of concept maps that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.

View Mentoring Kids to Careers cMap

In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.

This is extremely important because if we don't find ways to get thousands adults who don't live in poverty personally connected to youth and families that are in high poverty areas, we'll never build the empathy, and public will, to invest in the long-term efforts I describe in posts like this.

Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid.  You can find this graphic in this PDF.

Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic.  The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems.   While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved.  Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago and use it to try to draw more consistent attention and resources to EVERY tutor/mentor program in the region, not just the most visible.  

The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.

Competing for attention.  Drawing users to library.  Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing.  Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.

Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis.  The way philanthropy works, most programs compete with each other for scarce dollars. That does not encourage collaboration. Read this "Drain the Swamp" article to see what I mean.

Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.

I find too few conversations that focus on this step.  With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this 2017 article.

I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources.  I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.

Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid.  

Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities.    This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.

These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.

Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.

When I talk about the need for "better information" read some of the articles I've posted about program design and how many programs are needed.   

This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.

T/MC map created in 2008

It is essential that maps be used to support this process. With a map leaders can focus on all areas of a city where kids need extra help. At the same time, neighborhood groups can focus on their part of the city. Many groups need to be doing this.  With a map we can add overlays that show indicators of need, existing youth tutor/mentor and learning resources, and assets (business, hospitals, faith groups, universities, etc.) who could be helping youth programs grow in different areas....because they are also invested in these areas!

I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year.  No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas.  Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city. 

However, if we could solve this problem....

A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed.  I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.

This leads to the final graphic.

It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.  However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school!  It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.

Long-term; many places

I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.

I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.  In 2017 I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?" It still applies.

Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem.  While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my library of visual essays.

Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time.  If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.

Who should take the lead? Universities.

I've been reaching out to universities for over 30 years but never had the leverage (money and clout) to motivate busy faculty members to adopt the Tutor/Mentor strategies as their own.  Here's one article and here's another that show my invitation.  Read this "Tipping Points" article to see what's possible.

I just read today how Warren Buffet is making billion dollar donations around Thanksgiving and how MacKenzie Scott has doubled her giving in response the 2024 election.  People like these could fund long-term Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies at universities in every city in the country (or the world) and ensure they share ideas and learn from each other, so they constantly improve their impact.

They don't even need to involve me! They can  motivate people to spend time reading and learning from my blog and visual essays, just by providing the money needed to fuel such efforts!

I wrote an article in 2021 about "Learning from others. Don't re-invent the wheel".  This is the thinking behind the work I've done for so long. It is the reason for my library. I hope someone with higher visibility than I have will build an even larger library, and include links to my website in it. 

Finally, I wrote this article in January 2024 showing how one person was raising money for Democratic candidates throughout the country.  This is an example that could be duplicated to support youth serving programs in multiple locations.  This is another project that a billionaire could easily fund.

In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me. You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Thanks for reading. I know this is a long article and the links take you deeper and deeper. So don't try to read it all in one day. Make it part of on-going learning.  

Or make it a learning competition, as I describe on this page. You don't even need to be a billionaire to fund this!

I've been critical of Project 2025 and the billionaires behind it, but what if a few billionaires adopted the ideas in this article and supported them for the next 50 years.  This needs continuous support beyond one President.  

Can you help me do this work (and pay my bills)? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you.

Helping Youth Through School - Requires Long Term Thinking

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid.  You can find this graphic in this PDF.

Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic.  The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems.   While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved.  Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago.  The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network article.

Competing for attention.  Drawing users to library.  Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing.  Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.

Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis. Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.

I find too few conversations that focus on this step.  With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in  this article.

I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources.  I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.

Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid.  Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities.    This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.

These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.

Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.

This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.

I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year.  No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas.

However, if we could solve this problem....

A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed.  I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.

This leads to the final graphic.

It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.  However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school!  It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.

I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.

I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.  A few days ago I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?"

Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem.  While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation on SlideShare.

Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time.  If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.

In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me.

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you. 

Competing for Attention. Too Few Resources.

This week I read a five-part story about the demise of Local School Councils (LSC) in Chicago, written by Marcus Flenaugh who was defeated in this week's LSC election when only 30 people out of a school service area of about 27,000 residents took the time to vote.  In the 5th article  he concluded by urging people to mobilize and offered many specific suggestions.

That prompted me to look at a couple of visual essays that show a strategy that involves young people in community-organizing efforts.  

The first outlines a strategy that follows highly visible media stories with student generated stories. click here

The second shows an application of this strategy, focusing on the North Lawndale area of Chicago. click here

Below is the first part of an article I wrote in 2024, which points to similar articles from 2019 and 2012.

---- start 2024 -----

In October 1992, this was the front page of the Chicago SunTimes. 

The headline said "7-Year-Old's Death at Cabrini Requires Action".  

I had led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program serving Cabrini-Green 2nd to 6th grade kids since 1975, so this hit hard.  I was in the process of creating a new program to help kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade have similar support to help them from 7th grade through high school.  We called that program Cabrini Connections and launched it in January 1993. I led it until mid 2011.

However, this shooting was the catalyst for our creating a second program as we launched our site-based program.  That was the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC). It's goal was to help on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reach K-12 youth in every high poverty area of the Chicago region.

As I write today's article (remember, this was prior to the Nov. 2024 election), most attention is focused on the coming election and a variety of natural and man-made disasters taking place in the USA and the world.  

So how do we get a share of that attention focused on this issue?

click here to read the full article

---------end 2024 article ------

These articles focus on building on-going attention for specific areas of Chicago, or any other city, and in drawing needed resources to organizations and schools in the focus area. Since adults have their hands full, why not enlist youth from local schools and colleges?  

Above is one view created using the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which was created in 2008.  While the Program Locator no longer is active, it remains a model of "what is needed".  View this PDF essay to see some of the features that were included.

Since 2011 I've been using the MappingForJustice blog, created by Mike Traken in 2008, to show ways to use maps to draw more consistent attention to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas of Chicago.  The strategy can be used to draw attention to local schools and their surrounding community, too.

In this article I included a concept map showing layers of information that need to be included on maps now being built by others.

I also included the concept map in this article.

Since I began trying to harness map-making technology in 1993 the means of creating data maps have simplified dramatically.  However, while I find many maps that show boundaries and indicators (poverty, violence, health disparities, etc.) I don't find many showing existing service providers and I find even fewer adding assets (people who can help) to the map layers.  Or using their maps in on-going stories intended to draw more attention and resources into the map area.

Thus, my "Rest of the Story" essays can still provide some ideas that others can apply.  I hope that happens.

I close many of my articles with this photo of me standing in front of a map of Chicago, and a Chicago Tribune article with a headline of "City Kids at Risk". 

I'd love to find blog articles and newspaper stories with similar photos, showing political leaders, business leaders, sports and entertainment figures, and others in my place.

This could be a photo of a 5th grade boy or girl from a South Chicago  neighborhood!

Thanks for reading.  Connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Mastodon, Twitter and other platforms. see links here

And, if you're able, visit this page and make a small contribution to help me pay the bills.

After the Election This Work Still Is Needed

The next 18 days until the November election are going to be stressful for me, and probably millions of others.  Billionaires are pouring huge sums of money into disinformation campaigns intended to turn voters away from Kamala Harris and the Democratic candidates at the state, local and Federal level.

The chaos that will accompany election day will be terrifying. Maybe even deadly.  It will take courage and stamina to go to the polls and vote, or to be one of the people who work at election sites.  

I voted by mail and have received a confirmation that my ballot was received, but today I saw a report from California of ballots found in a sewer.   What else will happen?

Even after November 5th, I won't feel confident until Kamala Harris is inaugurated as the 47th President in January 2025.... along with majorities in both the House and Senate.

Keep your fingers crossed. Keep urging people to ignore the lies and vote.

What's at risk? You may have heard of Project 2025, the radical right agenda to reshape America.  This site was created by comic book artists and writers to help people better understand what's in Project 2025.  Take a look.  These people won't stop with this election. 

But what comes after the election?  

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on for the past 50 years is related to economic justice. If we help kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs and careers, and support networks, that enable them to live and raise their own children where ever they want, we do much to create economic justice. 

Since 2005 I've created a library of concept maps that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.

View Mentoring Kids to Careers cMap

In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.

This is extremely important because if we don't find ways to get thousands adults who don't live in poverty personally connected to youth and families that are in high poverty areas, we'll never build the empathy, and public will, to invest in the long-term efforts I describe in posts like this.

Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid.  You can find this graphic in this PDF.

Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic.  The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems.   While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved.  Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago.  The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.

Competing for attention.  Drawing users to library.  Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing.  Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.

Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis. Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.

I find too few conversations that focus on this step.  With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this 2017 article.

I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources.  I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.

Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid.  Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities.    This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.

These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.

Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.

When I talk about the need for "better information" read some of the articles I've posted about program design and how many programs are needed.   

This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.

T/MC map created in 2008

It is essential that maps be used to support this process. With a map leaders can focus on all areas of a city where kids need extra help. At the same time, neighborhood groups can focus on their part of the city. Many groups need to be doing this.  With a map we can add overlays that show indicators of need, existing youth tutor/mentor and learning resources, and assets (business, hospitals, faith groups, universities, etc.) who could be helping youth programs grow in different areas....because they are also invested in these areas!

I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year.  No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas.  Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city. 

However, if we could solve this problem....

A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed.  I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.

This leads to the final graphic.

It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.  However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school!  It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.

Long-term; many places

I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.

I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.  In 2017 I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?" It still applies.

Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem.  While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my library of visual essays.

Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time.  If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.

Moving into 2025.  I'm  hopeful that a landslide election of Democratic candidates will blunt the rise of fascist and authoritarian groups in America, but know that this election is just one step in a long battle against super rich people who want to reshape the government and society in their favor.   

I don't want to imagine the alternative.  

I wrote an article a few weeks ago showing Governor Tim Walz's interest in map.  Maybe he will champion this type of thinking in the next administration, and the ones that follow.

I wrote an article in 2021 about "Learning from others. Don't re-invent the wheel".  This is the thinking behind the work I've done for so long. It is the reason for my library. I hope someone with higher visibility than I have will build an even larger library, and include links to my website in it. 

Finally, I wrote this article in January 2024 showing how one person was raising money for Democratic candidates throughout the country.  This is an example that could be duplicated to support youth serving programs in multiple locations.  

In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me. You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Thanks for reading. I know this is a long article and the links take you deeper and deeper. So don't try to read it all in one day. Make it part of on-going learning.  

I've been critical of Project 2025 and the billionaires behind it, but what if a few billionaires adopted the ideas in this article and supported them for the next 50 years.  This needs continuous support beyond one President.  

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you.

Mother of 2 Gunned Down. Forgotten.

Reading my Chicago Tribune this morning, the article by Rex Huppke, under headline of "Mother of 2 Gunned Down and Forgotten" caught my attention. In the story he wrote about a mother of two small children who was killed last week on the 5600 block of South Michigan Avenue. In the article he also pointed to another article, about a 14-year old boy, killed just a block away, only three weeks earlier. I created the map below to show where these shootings took place:

This map is part of a series of Chicago community area maps that I posted earlier this year, showing the number of high poverty youth, age 6 to 17, living in different parts of the city. According to most recent Heartland Alliance data, there are 1410 youth in this age group, which is 52% of the total youth in the Washington Park community area, located just West of Hyde Park on Chicago's South side. 

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011. The T/MC has been creating maps like this since 1994, as a strategy to keep attention focused on areas featured in negative news stories, and as a tool leaders could use to understand where non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are most needed in different Chicago neighborhoods, where existing programs are located, and what assets are in the map area who could be helping fill the neighborhood with a wide range of needed youth and family supports.  In 2008 we built an interactive Chicago Program Locator, to enable people to create their own map analysis and stories.

My database is probably not 100% comprehensive, and the Program Locator has not been updated since 2013 due to lack of resources, but it still works for this purpose.  The only organized tutor/mentor program that I show in this area is the Chicago Youth Programs site in the North part of this area near 51st Street.  As far as assets, on the East side of Washington Park is the University of Chicago and University of Chicago Hospital, along with the entire Hyde Park neighborhood.

See my most updated list of programs in this article.

I've posted the graphic at the right multiple times on this blog. Imagine if groups of people in the Hyde Park area were meeting regularly to look at maps like mine, and creating new maps when other shootings take place, so that the people who have been killed and mentally wounded by these shootings are not only remembered, but their memory stimulates actions that lead to more k-12 tutoring, mentoring, learning and jobs programs in Washington Park and other areas surrounding Hyde Park.

I'm not picking on Hyde Park. That just happens to be the biggest resource in the area around Washington Park. If the story had been about a shooting in Austin, such as this one, I'd be talking about Oak Park.

Before I started reading today's Chicago Tribune, I looked at my Twitter feed, and saw this post.

I wrote about the questions around Chance the Rapper’s purchase of Chicagoist - and what a grass-roots Chicago media brand might look like: https://t.co/2kP8e7CyVO

— Scott Smith (@ourmaninchicago) July 23, 2018

Chance The Rapper has purchased Chicagoist. What will he do with it?

I invite him to dig into stories and ideas I've posted on this blog, and the Mapping for Justice blog, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site, and then put these ideas to work in Chicagoist, and his music.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection has been creating map-stories, and graphics like this one, since 1994, to try to draw more attention, and mobilize more people, to support the growth of youth tutor/mentor programs in areas of Chicago where mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and grandparents have been getting shot and killed every day for decades.

In this article, and many other articles I suggest that youth in middle school, high school, and college, and in faith groups, and non-school tutor/mentor programs could be creating similar map stories, following every single shooting or media story about violence, poorly performing schools, gangs and other indicators showing that these neighborhoods need extra help, for many years, to change what's in the news.

At the right is an article that John McCarron of the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1995 about the vision of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. You can see it and many others on this page.

To answer Rex. They don't need to be forgotten.

They won't be if you, Chance the Rapper, and many others duplicate stories I've written for nearly 25 years in your own efforts.

Don't just talk about the tragedy. End your stories by pointing readers to some of the Chicago youth organizations I point to in this article, or the volunteer-opportunity search resources I aggregate on this concept map.

End every story with "get informed. get involved....with time, talent, dollars and votes"

I'd be happy to spend time with anyone talking about what I've been trying to do. I'm on Twittter @tutormentorteam. Also on LinkedIN and Facebook.