Does this Scare You?

I keep adding links to a section of my web library showing challenges facing non profits. Since so much responsibility is heaped upon them, this should scare anyone. I attended the Breaking IT! Down Conference last Friday at UIC, and the mid day panel focused on challenges facing non profits, as well as ideas proposed by Dan Pallotta in his TED talk. I wrote about that here.

During the noon panel John Rodgers of Arial Capital talked about how leaders of hedge funds and private equity funds were making over $500 billion dollars at the height of the financial crisis and that much of this income came from managing the funds of philanthropic foundations.

Carlos Tortolero, Executive Director of the National Museum of Mexican Art, summed up the feeling of many non profit leaders when he said "We have to talk about survival. We can't talk about growth."

So what will it take for some of those hedge fund managers to devote 20-30% of their annual income to supporting youth tutoring, mentoring, jobs and college access programs, as well as the infrastructure that helps each program operate more effectively, and at a lower cost per program?

That's a scary thought. I'll write more about my ideas tomorrow.

Poverty - Public Education's Biggest Problem - Washington Post article

Two articles by Valerie Stauss in the October 18, 2013 and October 17, 2013 show the impact of poverty on education for poor kids and the impact of policy being driven by "elites" who have no personal experience with living in high poverty.

One paragraph reads "But education has a powerful role to play in combating poverty and its various manifestations. Not just by exposing children to career-advancing skills, but also by exposing them to a full range of potential interests and pursuits, by affording time and resources to discover what they care for and what they are good at, and by supporting creative thinking and creative action."

This type of support can be offered by non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, even if it is not being fully offered in the local school.

Mentor Role in Larger Strategy

I’ve often been asked “What type of tutoring or mentoring do you do?” and have had difficulty communicating the idea that volunteer tutors/mentors represent “extra adults” helping kids living in high poverty neighborhoods of big cities who have too few people in their lives who model diverse jobs and career opportunities, and who are working to help these kids move through school and into adult lives and careers.

Kids aren’t “widgets” or “robots” where a certain dose of tutoring or mentoring can overcome the personal and environmental challenges facing them. All kids need extra forms of support. Kids in poverty have extra challenges, and less community support.

This graphic can be found in this PDF essay. It is intended to illustrate the influences in the lives of youth living in high poverty areas that are not as common to youth in more affluent areas. It also emphasizes the supports that are less frequently available.

Over the past 20 years I’ve created a variety of visualizations to illustrate my ideas. I hope you’ll read the rest of this article and follow the links to additional information and ideas. If you agree, please form a group and begin to share this information regularly.

Throughout the country the terms “tutoring” and “mentoring” are used in a variety of different ways, with different meaning, based on the experience and perspective of the person using the terms. Until we group into sub-categories, focusing on kids in urban poverty, kids in rural poverty, immigrant kids who often don’t speak English, and kids who have social/emotional needs, but may live in communities with tremendous resources, we won’t build a shared understanding of problems facing each sub group of kids, which means we won’t build and sustain long-term strategies to help youth overcome those challenges.

This graphic is from a “Defining Terms” essay that illustrates the role of different types of tutoring/mentoring roles, in different types of programs.

I’ve written numerous articles on this blog showing impact of poverty on inner city youth. I integrate maps into many, to illustrate the need for comprehensive programs in many different neighborhoods. This section of links in my web library contains links to many other web sites that focus on concentrated, segregated poverty as a root cause of many social and economic ills. On the Mapping For Justice blog I provide numerous maps that further illustrate this point.

I’ve created a variety of graphics, like this concept map to illustrate the different needs of youth as they move from one grade to another, over the 12 years most kids to move from first grade to high school graduation. In areas of high poverty, volunteer tutors and mentors are extra adults who help young people and communities access these resources.

I point to a variety of articles about “social capital” which show how youth in segregated, high poverty neighborhoods benefit from volunteers and programs that connect them to ideas, experiences and opportunities beyond what are modeled in the family or community. This is a form of “bridging social capital”.

Thus, if non-school tutor/mentor programs are able to recruit volunteers from diverse workplace backgrounds youth would be exposed to a diverse range of career and education models, as well as many different racial, age and religious backgrounds.

Read - Mentor Role in Youth Development Strategy

A program with a mix of volunteers from different business backgrounds can offer a wide range of extra learning and mentoring activities beyond one-on-one tutoring or mentoring. Site based programs with space in the neighborhood close enough for youth to participate weekly are more likely to offer such extra learning opportunities on an on-going basis than community based mentoring.

Programs that have a diverse base of volunteers are “mentor rich”. I used to use the term Total Quality Mentoring (TQM) to show a constant process of innovation and improvement made possible by the participation of such a diverse base of volunteers.

However, not every program has the leadership, marketing, or connections to business, that are needed to draw volunteers from diverse backgrounds. This set of articles in the web library show challenges facing non profit organizations.

This article focuses on “tipping points” or actions and strategies that might help stronger, mentor-rich youth programs be available in more places.

In this 2010 Civic Enterprises report titled, “Untapped Potential: Filling the Promise of Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Bigs and Littles they Represent”, a BBBS study shows that many volunteers are concerned that they alone cannot do enough to help their mentees overcome the poverty where they live. Many are willing to do more.

Thus, while using conferences, technical assistance and training to help each program improve their ability to recruit and retain volunteers, I have been advocating for leaders in business, faith groups, hospitals, etc. to become proactive in building support for mentor-rich programs in every neighborhood.

This “Recruiting Talent Volunteers” pdf and this “Virtual Corporate Office” pdf illustrate roles companies and their employee-volunteers can take.

The links below provide extra reading for corporate leaders, showing many benefits to programs of volunteers engaged for multiple years

==Service Learning Loop flash animation in 2011 (view in this video).

== Volunteer Involvement Growth/Benefit - flash animation - (view in this video)

--- In addition, here are a set of links to articles showing benefit to companies resulting from support of volunteer involvement in mentor-rich programs

This last graphic is a “reality check”. While I spend many hours every day reaching out to build a network of people and resources to support youth programs in inner city neighborhoods, I realize that the world has many complex problems, and most people are more focused on their own jobs, family, entertainment and health than they are on the well-being of people who they don’t see and relate to every day.

Thus, I’m not trying to get the attention of everyone, or even most of “everyone”. I’m just trying to get the attention of a very small percent of “everyone” which really represents a large number of people in a world with more than 7 billion humans.

Or, to put this another way, I’m trying to inspire people to devote a regular slice of the time, talent and dollars they devote to helping others, to helping well-organized, volunteer based tutor/mentor programs reach youth in high poverty neighborhoods.

One way to do this is to help business volunteers become involved in any tutor/mentor program in the Chicago region. I do this by providing this list of Chicago programs in many of my blog articles and my social media.

If what I do is copied and adopted by others, we'd have much more daily attention focused on helping people engage with this information, and become involved in different programs and the lives of kids in many places. This ROLE OF LEADERS essay illustrates strategies that could be adopted in many organizations.

I also do this by sharing ideas that help programs attract and retain volunteers. Workshops at the Tutor/Mentor Conferences always focus on volunteer recruitment strategies.

However, another way to do this is to create a “Great Mentoring Reunion” with a goal of reaching people who have been involved in tutor/mentor programs over the past 40 years. There are thousands of inactive mentors and former mentees who already have some personal experience with mentoring and tutoring. Many have benefited from such involvement. Connecting people from the past, and the present, can lead to greater support of tutor/mentor strategies and mentor rich programs in the future.

Increasing the number of programs and volunteers expands the army of people who are looking beyond ‘mentoring and tutoring’ to all of the actions needed to help youth move through school and into jobs and careers.

The Chicago Tribune is now seeking ideas for a new plan for Chicago. I encourage anyone who has been reading this blog and my articles to submit your own ideas for how we engage people, and keep them engaged and learning from their service, for multiple years.

Without engaging more people who don’t live in poverty, in personal involvement with any strategy that is developed, it’s not likely to reach youth in all the places where kids need help, for all the years help is needed.

If you share your strategy on a blog and send me the address, I’ll be happy to take a look at it. If you join the http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com site you can share your strategy in your own blog within that web site.

Engaged Learning as the Bridge to Civic Engagement - Applied Thinking

I attended a presentation last night at UIC and was pleased to hear Dr. Troy Duster, Chancellor's Professor, University of California, Berkley, say that "moral arc of leaders is long" and "in bleak times, step back and let's take the long view."

His ideas on "engaged learning" mirror efforts I've made since the mid 1990s to build partnership with faculty at different universities in the Chicago region, including my alma matter, Illinois Wesleyan, so their students could do the work required to build networks of people working consistently to help make youth serving organizations available in every high poverty neighborhood of the region.

I looked up Dr. Duster on the Internet to see if I could find more of his ideas. I found the Longview Institute, which operated from 2005-2009 (not very long). I learned that he is the grandson of Ida B. Wells, so he has a long history of civic engagement and community organizing.

Having been sharing ideas about ways youth programs in Chicago should be created and supported for the past 20 years, I certainly appreciate the need to think of the "long view". In fact much of the work I've done over the past few years has been aimed at putting my ideas on the Internet and finding younger leaders who have the passion and talent to carry them forward into the future.

These are some blog articles I've written on this topic in the past. I've created maps showing the location of universities throughout the region. My goal since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 was that teams of students/alumni from each university would become a hub of knowledge about tutor/mentor programs and support groups in the area around the university.

In the early 2000s a team of students from DePaul University created this strategic plan, providing reasons for a University to form an on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I was told by a researcher at Chapin Hall in 1993 that I was unrealistic if I felt I could get universities in the city to work together for a common purpose. I wish that researcher had spent more time recognizing that I was only hoping that small teams in each university might form to do this work. I could connect those teams with each other via my newsletters, conferences, and ultimately web sites. This concept map and article was created in 2009 by a graduate from Northwestern University. It shows different departments within the university who each do some work related to the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Such maps could be created for many campuses and student communicator could be inviting representatives of each to connect and share ideas on an on-going basis.

Dr. Duster was passionate in his belief that engagement with communities could start at the university level by engaging youth in local problem solving. He described resistance on university campuses to engaged learning and called for "insurgencies" to form on different campus, with enlightened leaders forming their own engaged learning projects.

I'm still looking for a day in the future when there would be a Tutor/Mentor Connection student team/project on every campus in the Chicago region. Dr. Duster's comments give me hope that if I, and others after me, keep sending the invitation and pointing to models of existing projects where youth support the growth of multiple needed services in the areas around a university, we might have a breakthrough at some point in the future.

At the Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago on Nov. 4 I'll be leading two workshops talking of ways students in high school and college could be engaged in team building and information sharing. I hope some who have heard Dr. Duster will want to attend.

A New Chicago Plan - Some Suggestions

In Sunday's Chicago Tribune, readers and organizations were invited to finish the work that civic architect Daniel Burnham started over 100 years ago — "to address the imperiled livability, uneven prosperity and desperate public finances that have driven residents to leave by the hundreds of thousands." Read the article and offer your ideas.

As this 1995 article demonstrates, I've been offering my ideas for close to 20 years. In the graphics below I'll highlight a few key points.

Raising kids is like building a building. You start at the beginning, birth or conception, whichever you prefer, and work toward adulthood, and self reliance. A team of people is involved in any building project, and blueprints define work that needs to be done at each stage of the project, along with who needs to be involved.

This takes 20 to 30 years of consistent support. Building and sustaining support from millions of Chicago area residents, now and in future years, is the primary challenge that must be overcome.

The graphic below is one I've been working on for nearly 20 years. It shows a range of supports that youth need from the time they are born to when they enter jobs and careers. To me, volunteer tutors/mentors in organized non-school tutor/mentor programs are "extra adults" helping youth and families get needed resources. They are needed in areas of high poverty where families and communities struggle to make such resources available.

If you click on this link you can view the graphic. You can also click on a few of the nodes, which take you to a web library where I've aggregated links specific to that topic.

Building a solution to the problems facing Chicago, and other cities, should be considered a form of "open source" development. A web portal that enables anyone to post an idea and link it visually to a map, or a blueprint, is something I've been looking for help with for many years.

This image is a map of Chicago. The "oil well" intends to illustrate that the "birth to work" support system needs to be available in different parts of every community area of Chicago. Since poverty is now growing the suburbs, and what happens in the city affects the suburbs, this new vision for Chicago really needs to be a vision for the Chicago region.

While I've been sharing these ideas for nearly 20 years, most of the leaders in Chicago have been busy ignoring them and doing their own "problem solving". In addition to the Tribune's call for ideas, the Donors Forum has launched a platform for "Building a Better Illinois" and the Mayor's office is supporting a Thrive Chicago initiative, which does not yet have a web site.

There are dozens of different organizations focused on helping youth overcome poverty and succeed in school. Thus, one of the first challenges is connecting the different networks with each other and integrating the ideas into one collective vision, with a set of blueprints that anyone can use to support their own actions, in one or more neighborhoods of the region. This concept map points to many networks focusing on youth that I'm aware of. I'm sure there are more.

Anyone who has put an addition on their house, or built a towering skyscraper knows that you need financing so that everyone gets paid to do the work they are supposed to do. Anyone involved in non-profit work knows that finding financing to do all of the work you need to be doing is almost impossible. I was at a Philanthropy Club meeting last week where a Compass Point report titled "Underdeveloped: Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fund Raising" was discussed. I've created an entire section of articles that focus on challenges facing the non profit sector, and have recently pointed to solutions offered by creative thinkers like Dan Pallotta.

Thus, not only do we need to create a blueprint capturing the ideas of many different organizations already involved in efforts to improve the well-being of the Chicago region, we need to innovate new ways of funding this work over a period of many decades, while the city and state faces all sorts of financial challenges.

I created this slideshare essay to illustrate some of the work that needs to be done.

Networking for purpose - Bringing People Together to Help Inner City Youth from Daniel Bassill

Here are a few additional essays on Scrib.come that I would recommend

* 4-part strategy on Scribd - http://tinyurl.com/TMI-4-part-strategy

* Planning Cycle - War on Poverty - http://www.scribd.com/doc/93233051/Planning-Cycle-War-on-Poverty

* Collaboration goals - http://tinyurl.com/TMC-Collaboration-Scribd-com

* Year Round strategy - http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Year-round

The success of the new Chicago Plan, or any other, will depend on how many leaders in business, philanthropy, religion, politics, etc. adopt the commitment shown in this strategy map and this Role of Leaders essay.

When the Mayor asks "Where on your web site do you show your commitment to this strategy? before providing a contract or favor, or when the media begin to build web lists pointing to web sites of leaders who include a version of this strategy map on their web sites, we'll begin to have the motivation and accountability needed to not only build a strategy, but to build and distribute the resources to make it work.

I've hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months since May 1994, with the goal of bringing leaders together to innovate ways to make more and better tutor/mentor programs available throughout the city and suburbs. I've never had consistent financial support, nor have I had consistent participation from media, business leaders, political or faith leaders. Yet, I'm still sending the invitation to connect.

The next conference is Monday, November 4 at the Metcalfe Federal Building. If the ideas I've shared resonate with you, take part in the conference, or reach out to add your support to my own efforts, or include me in your efforts.

Visit Pinterest to find more graphics like those in this article. Click into the various sub categories of past articles (shown on left) to find more illustrated articles and ideas.

Visualize your strategies for helping kids through school and into jobs

Before the Internet was a primary tool for communication, and many years before I started writing this blog, print newsletters were used to share ideas. This is page 2 from the Fall 1999 Tutor/Mentor News. I started publishing this newsletter in 1993 and continued every four months through 2001. At its peak I was sending this to over 8,000 people. I now have that many visits to my web sites every month.

In the graphics on this page of the newsletter I'm communicating a goal that every industry build strategies that support the growth of long-term, non-school, mentor-rich, volunteer-based youth serving organizations. The graphic shows that programs are needed in three time frames, school day, right after school, after-work/weekends and it includes a map, illustrating that such programs are needed in every high poverty neighborhood of the Chicago region.

I started communicating this strategy in power point/pdf essays in the late 1990s, and have been posting them on Scribd.com and SlideShare in the past two years. I've posted a library of graphics from these presentations on Pinterest. The essays on Scribd have been viewed more than 64,000 times in less than two full years.

Interns have worked with me for many years and since 2005 I've had them spend time looking at these graphics and PDF essays, then build new versions that share their own understanding of the ideas, using different types of media to communicate the ideas. This "iceberg" graphic was created to illustrate the infrastructure every tutor/mentor program needs in order to support on-going connections of youth and volunteer tutors/mentors. It was created by an intern several years ago.

At the right is an animation, created by another intern, providing a different interpretation of the same idea.

Here's another example. In this PDF I show that as volunteers spend time (service) in tutor/mentor program, they are learning more about poverty and the needs of youth. They are also expanding their personal network and building new skills. Each week as they do service they informally share stories of what they are learning with friends, family and co-workers, which leads to more people becoming involved. The graphic below was created in 2007 by an intern from Hong Kong, to interpret the message in the PDF. Then it was re-done a few years later by an intern from Korea working with one of our Northwestern University Public Service Fellows. Here's the latest version.

Thus, for more than 15 years I've been sharing ideas that leaders in any industry, politics, universities, and/or faith groups, etc. could be using in their own efforts to help k-12 youth in every high poverty neighborhood have a wide range of tutor/mentor programs to participate in, with an overall goal of helping kids move through school and into jobs, with a growing number of volunteers from different industry, business and social/economic backgrounds helping.

I've created a web library where I post links to work being done by other organizations, researchers, idea people, etc. Most of the links I point to host their own web library. They serve as a hub for additional knowledge. I'd like to find a web library pointing to places on business, political, media and celebrity web sites where visualizations like I've created are being used to show their own commitment to helping kids in ALL POVERTY NEIGHBORHOODS move through school and into jobs.

If you're hosting such a web library, or see this as a research project for you and your students, please share your web site so I can point to it in my own efforts.

Connected learning - the MOOC experience explained

With so much information available how do we navigate this, find what we're looking for, make sense out of it, then apply it to our own personal agendas? I've been aggregating information that people could use to help inner city kids for more than 20 years and host it in a web library on the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site. It's a huge amount of information and no one can absorb it in a short time.

Frankly, without some help from others, most of the great ideas and resources on the site will be undiscovered. Thus, I've been following the growth of on-line learning, connectivism and MOOCS, with great interest.

Today one of the people I met during the Jan-March Education, Technology and Media MOOC, #ETMOOC, encouraged me and others to view this article posted by Christina Hendricks, describing her own experience during the ETMOOC. She does such a great job I encourage you to read what she has written, then browse some of the articles I've written that focus this process on building a network of people and organizations working to help youth in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.

A Collaboration of the Willing - Leading from Behind

I've used this graphic dozens of times to illustrate a vision of engaging workplace volunteers in long-term strategies that help inner-city youth move from first grade to first jobs. I've created a library of graphics like this on Pinterest and posted a library of illustrated essays on Scribd.com.

I started doing this almost 20 years ago when I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection, at the same time as I and six other volunteers were creating the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program in Chicago. Every year since then, I've invested time, talent, and a fragmented flow of dollars to build the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Doing this as part of a single tutor/mentor program provided many benefits, but it also made it difficult for leaders throughout the region to clearly understand the T/MC strategy.

This is another graphic I've used often. We all want the outcomes shown at the top of this graphic, but without the work at the bottom, too few people are connected to each other, and too few are working strategically to support age-appropriate tutoring, mentoring, learning, jobs programs, etc. in every high poverty neighborhood of the city and suburbs.

Recently a friend send me a document from the World Economic Forum, titled "Multistakeholder Collaboration for Healthy - Living Toolkit for Joint Action". On the web site where this PDF is shared, is a message saying "To assist stakeholders in initiating and managing multistakeholder actions for Healthy Living, the Forum and the Pan American Health Organization, in collaboration with Bain & Company, have developed the “Toolkit for Multistakeholder Action”. The Toolkit is based on a simple six-block framework to help collaborations structure and progress with their joint work.

It provides step-by-step guidelines, hands-on templates, practical resources and case studies to illustrate solutions to the core challenges of multistakeholder actions at the local, national or global level."

On page 8 of this pdf this graphic illustrates the six steps of multi-stakeholder collaboration. In this concept map, I point to several dozen intermediary organizations working in the Chicago region and focused on the well-being of youth. If you know leaders in these organizations, I encourage you to share the PDF with them.

Many have asked me for the strategic plan of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. While I've created written versions of this countless times since 1993, I feel that "my web sites" are the plan, and are the plan in action! Anyone who is willing to spend the time, can browse through the web sites and learn the strategies I've developed over the past 20 years, and apply them to their own work. I've created a variety of PDF essays to summarize what I'm trying to do, such as this one. I've also created a series of concept maps, that show the vision of helping youth in poverty move to jobs, and this one showing the 4-part strategy that supports what leaders can do to help make this happen.

In 2011 after the Cabrini Connections board of directors voted to no longer support the Tutor/Mentor Connection, I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC as a business structure to keep the T/MC available in Chicago and to help similar intermediaries grow in other cities. I created this WIKI to show my goals, and this PDF to show value of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to others.

After reviewing the WEB graphic, I created a new version, showing actions I have been taking related to each of the six steps in the tool kit. That graphic is below.

I created this concept map, showing the 4-part strategy, and work that needs to be done to support each step of the strategy more fully. I don't have the organizational strength, funds, or talent to do all of this myself. Others need to share ownership, if they also share the vision of helping kids in every poverty neighborhood overcome the violence, poverty, negative aspirations, etc. that face them.

In this Harvard Business Review blog article by Linda Hill, she talks about leaders like Nelson Mandella, who “stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

This is the type of leadership I provide, and the goal of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. I believe the ideas and resources I've aggregated, and the tools I continue to develop, can be used by any organization in Chicago that works to help youth and families.

In this ROLE OF LEADERS pdf, I invite leaders from business and many other sectors to take the lead in strategies that help kids move from first grade to first jobs. In this RESOURCES pdf, I show tools I've developed to support such leaders in Chicago. With help, these can be developed and used to support leaders sharing similar goals, in any city in the world.

It has taken me more than 35 years to develop these ideas, and I'm constantly learning and updating my own thinking. Thus, I hope you and others will take a little time each month over the next few years to understand and apply these ideas in your own thinking. As you do, share what you do on blogs and web sites and I and others will learn from you.

If you'd like to connect, why not attend the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago on Monday, Nov. 4, or introduce yourself to me on Twitter, Facebook, Linked in or this blog.

9-14-2018 update - I'm still trying to "lead from behind" but with even fewer resources than I had in 2013 when I wrote this.  I have not hosted a conference in Chicago since 2013, yet I probably reach and share ideas with far more people every week than ever attended any of the Tutor/Mentor Conferences.  

If you value what I'm doing please visit my FUND ME page and offer your support.

My Mentor. The Father I never Had.

On Tuesday, September 17 I attended the Tenth Annual My Hero Awards Luncheon, hosted by the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program. This is a group of lawyers from Chicago who have raised more than $1.4 million since 1994 to fund the general operations of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. Read more about this event.

During the late 1990s the Lend A Hand Program was part of the Chicago Bar Foundation and held an annual event in November which attracted more than 1500 lawyers, friends and families. Since 2002 a My Hero Awards Lunch in the spring or fall has attracted more than 200 participants to give recognition to lawyers, law firms, business and judges who are involved with volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring programs in the Chicago region.

During this week's event Doug Wambach, a shareholder at Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C. received one "Making a Difference Award" and Richard Gleason, managing partner of O'Mara, Gleason & O'Callaghan, LLC, received a second award.

Wambach has been involved in many roles supporting Boys Hope Girls Hope for more than a decade. He was nominated by a youth he has mentored for the past several years. In the nomination letter, the youth wrote "I haven't been writing about a mentor; I'm writing about a father I never had." In his acceptance comments, Wambach said "He's the one who made a difference in my life, and in my family's life."

Gleason has been involved with the mentoring program at the Logan Square Boys & Girls Club in Chicago since 2006. The boy he has mentored for the past 6 years is now working at the club and gave the nomination speech. He said "If it wasn't for Rich, I don't know where I'd be now."

Over my 35 years of leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program I've heard comments like this from many alumni and volunteers of the programs I've led, and of other programs I've connected with. This has led me to three levels of understanding, which are reflected in the graphic below, and in this Logic Model pdf essay.

First, the testimony of young people and volunteers convinces me that connecting youth with volunteers from the business community, and keeping them connected for multiple years, is something we should try to do.

Second, to connect youth living in high poverty neighborhoods with volunteers who don't live in the neighborhood, but model many types of work and career experiences that youth might aspire to, structured, well-organized, and well funded programs like Boys Hope Girls Hope and the Logan Square Boys & Girls are needed.

Third, since there are more than 125,000 high poverty youth living in Chicago, and many more in the suburbs, we need hundreds of well organized programs, not just the few that are now in existence. For such programs to be in place and well organized, we need organizations like the Lawyers Lend A Hand to be raising millions of dollars from their industry and spreading this money each year to on-going programs throughout the city and suburbs.

If every industry, fraternal and alumni organization forms a Lend A Hand type program, the result would be multiple sources of on-going funding, and a diversity of volunteers, supporting tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty zip code, thus enabling each program to have a higher percent of the total dollars each needs to operate, as well as a diversity of volunteer talent helping the program innovate ways to constantly improve their impact on the lives of kids....and volunteers.

I've been broadcasting this idea for nearly 20 years, yet there are few leaders who have embraced the idea to the point that they should be receiving awards for how well they support "birth to work" mentoring programs in places where they do business or where employees and customers live. Why is this?

1) Maybe I'm the wrong messenger. I'm not from a wealthy family. I'm not the CEO of a big company. I'm not politically connected. I'm not of a minority racial background.

2) The non profits who would benefit most from increased resources, are not embracing the strategy. There's too much fear of losing volunteers or donors by talking about the need for tutor/mentor programs all over the city, rather than just their own program. The competitive nature of philanthropy reinforces this.

3) Business leaders who lead multiple store corporations via central office strategies don't apply the same thinking to what they do to support multiple non profits in all neighborhoods where they are needed. It's easy to adopt one or two high profile programs, or run a small in-house volunteer program. It's harder to take on a role intended to build an distribution of these programs, and a supply system to support them. Read more about how businesses might help programs grow.

4) I've never been able to keep consistent funding or build a large enough funding base to spread these ideas consistently, draw people together for conferences, or teach leaders to adopt and use the ideas.

I've written more than 1000 articles on this blog since 2005, all intended to build consistent support for constantly improving tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods. In addition, I've created a variety of essays to illustrate ideas that leaders might adopt in support of multiple tutor/mentor programs. Finally, I've created a web library with more than 2000 links to ideas of other people around the world which can be applied to building and sustaining individual programs as well as networks of programs.

This is all part of a 4 part strategy, illustrated in this strategy pdf and this concept map. Since 2011 I've not had a non profit organizational structure to support this strategy, and I'm reaching out to find volunteers and partners to re-build this. However, I'm more interested in finding ways to embed these ideas and strategies in many other organizations, in Chicago and around the country, so more owners carry this forward in future years, and so it's not dependent on any single organization or individual. If you're interested in this let's find a way to talk.

These ideas and web resources are free to anyone who wants to see more young adults standing up in front of crowds saying "my mentor made a difference in my life." I hope you'll spend some time getting to know them.

Using Street Violence to Sell Newspaper

This photo was on the front page of my Chicago Tribune yesterday. If you're a subscriber to the Tribune's internet site you can read the full story online. The print version included two full pages of stories about kids in Chicago who have been victims of street violence.

Included was a map showing where these shootings occurred, which is mostly on the West and South parts of Chicago. I've been pointing to media stories like these for the past 20 years as part of an effort to get more people involved in strategies that build and sustain a wide range of youth serving organizations in these areas.

Here's one story I wrote in July 2010. It includes a copy of the Chicago SunTimes from October 1992 after Dantrell Davis was killed. Here's a story I wrote in 2008 following a SunTimes series about how street violence impacts inner city kids. In this I posted maps of neighborhoods where violence was taking place, with a call for people to be involved in supporting those programs.

I've been following media stories with map-stories since 1993 when I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Since I never have had advertising dollars to attract public attention, I try to build off of the attention the media have generated with negative news, and images of kids and suffering parents. In my stories I always post a link to the story I'm talking about. However, after a year or two, maybe shorter, these stories are no longer available at the same link. Thus, they don't have an accumulated weight that might motivate more people to become involved in trying to reduce the conditions that cause the violence in the first place. Recently the papers have been hiding these stories behind subscription services, and I feel that further reduces the number of people who will read the story and be motivated to get involved.

While the Tribune and SunTimes and other media have community service and charitable foundations, these only provide funding to a small group of the youth serving organizations in the city and suburbs, and only a small portion of the total funds every youth organization needs every year. Using the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, and drawing from maps that are produced by media and other organizations, I've been able to create graphics and map stories, like below, to try to draw people together who would innovate ways to build a better distribution of resources to all of the neighborhoods where youth serving organizations and other services are needed on an on-going basis.

I think youth can learn to create these visualizations. Interns working with me have been doing this for several years. You can see examples at this page.

I'm hosting another Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago on Monday, November 4 and will be doing a series of workshops showing how to use maps to create stories, and how youth can create and communicate these stories as part of their own learning and service. I'm still looking for additional volunteers to host workshops at this conference, and others who will help build participation. If you'd like to get involved email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net or fill out the workshop presenter form on this page.

I've collected media stories that draw attention to violence and poorly performing schools for almost 20 years. I've seen passionate editorials saying we need to do something. Yet, I've not seen a consistent effort to draw people together and draw resources to youth serving organizations and schools that works like the advertising done by most corporations every day to draw people to their stores and sell products and services.

Since media outlets are in business to generate profit we need to find others who will provide the resources and leadership that makes the archive of media stories more open to community activists, and that encourages media stories to point to directories of youth serving organizations throughout the region so more are supported by the people who are reading and following the daily news.

What would you do to make this happen?

Arts Education in Chicago - A Collective Effort

I attended a Chicago Arts Partnership meeting on Friday, hosted by Ingenuity, Inc and the Arts Education Department of Chicago Public Schools. Ingenuity, Inc. is led by Paul Sznewajs, who founded Snow City Arts Foundation in the 1990s, which is when we first met.

Much has been written about Collective Impact in the past couple of years. Paul and his group have done much to bring together more than 600 arts education groups in Chicago with a vision that "all Chicago Public School students, from the day they start school until the day they graduate, will receive quality arts education at every grade level"

During Friday's meeting Paul and others provided a history of how arts education organizations have come together in this effort and a vision for the future. One of the resources Inginuity, Inc. has created is an Arts Look portal that maps locations of arts education providers, with layers of information showing providers of different types of arts education.

This network building started many years ago and has reached out to engage many different arts initiatives. It's supported by the Mayor, and has generated a $1 million a year commitment to fund arts education programs in schools. Friday's meeting was a celebration of progress and an announcement of next steps. Very impressive. Well done.



I'm impressed by what Ingenuity, Inc has accomplished because this is much of what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been attempting to do since being formed in 1993. Our focus has been to help mentor-rich non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning organizations reach k-12 youth in high poverty neighborhoods. Our strategy has been to build a directory of existing programs and a library of information, then a larger on-going public eduction effort that would draw more consistent operating support to existing and emerging organizations. This strategy has been share in on-line maps, essays, graphics, etc. since 1998. It's a strategy that needs many leaders, but can be supported by a few who build knowledge libraries and tools that support collective efforts.