If you agree that connecting a youth with a volunteer tutor/mentor is a good thing....

I want to point you to two graphics that summarize the work I've done since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011.

First is this Logic Model graphic

If you agree that connecting a youth with a volunteer tutor/mentor is a good thing, you need to understand how organized programs are needed to build and sustain on-going connections that reach K-12 youth in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago. Mentoring is not about reading, writing, test scores, and teacher-directed tutoring. It's about relationships that form because a program like the ones I led between 1975 and 2011 were available in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood, and created an introduction during one year, that we hoped would last for a life time.

I'm still connected to the 4th grade boy I was first matched with in 1973!

Well organized tutor/mentor programs support the match between youth and adult, with the goal that they last for additional years so the bond between young people and volunteers, and the organization, grows and remains supportive as everyone grows older. And while there are many great programs, if you look at a map, and the number of kids who live in these areas, you'll see that many great programs are needed.  I keep looking for people who have a long-term strategy to make that happen.

Dig deeper.  View my Logic Model article on Substack.com and this visual essay.

Then look at this "Influence" graphic

If we want great youth serving organizations reaching k-12 youth in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other places we need to provide traditional training to help staff, volunteers, board members learn how to build effective programs.

However, unless we also educate resource providers, volunteers, media and political leaders to take an active, on-going role that delivers operating resources, talent, ideas and technology to programs in every neighborhood, on an on-going basis, few programs will have the resources needed to put good ideas into practice.

Read on. If you agree, share with people in your own network.  

Look at the elements of this graphic.

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

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

Let’s look at this chart closer:

A tutor/mentor program supports a connection between an adult volunteer with a youth living in an area where indicators show extra adult support and learning activities are needed. NOTE: many mentoring strategies are not primarily focused on youth living in high poverty. However, there is much research showing that for youth living in high poverty the non-school hours offer risk if not filled with positive learning activities and that there are too few resources in most neighborhoods. The Tutor/Mentor Institute's primary focus is helping mentor rich programs reach youth living in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago.

There are a wide variety of formal mentoring programs, and many youth are involved in informal mentoring. This 2014 report: The Mentoring Effect, shows that too few youth are engaged in formal mentoring.  This remains true in 2026, and with the remote learning restrictions posted by Covid19, there are even greater gaps in mentoring availability. 

This is one graphic from my web site illustrating a need to support youth for many years. The photo on the left is from the mid 1990s. The photo on the right shows one of those teens when she was the guest speaker at our 2010 year-end celebration. I'm still connected to most of them on Facebook, as is Claudia Crilly Bellucci, the woman shown in the 1990s photo.

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

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

This "tipping point" article talks about building future leaders and donors for mentor-rich programs.

This article uses teams on a football field to visualize the idea that great teams need a wide range of on-going support. So do great youth programs.  

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

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

Here's another graphic that emphasizes the need for long-term support.

Leaders need to use my concept maps like blueprints to show the sequence of support that needs to begin in pre-school and continue into adult lives.  They need to use GIS maps to show all of the places where this strategy needs to be anchored. Click here to view this concept map.

Are they?  
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Build lists of youth tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities and use your own media each day to encouraging volunteers to give time, talent and dollars to build great youth tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in more places.

Click here to read my "Influence" article on Substack.com and click here to view my visual essay.

Since we don't have the advertising dollars to lead such a campaign we depend on the voices of individuals.  Can you be one of those voices?  

Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon, Facebook and Instagram to share your stories.   

If you value what I'm writing about, a small contribution will help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

Scary Reading. Pre-Election. Again.

I posted this on November 2, 2024, not knowing that DTrump would find a way to win (steal) the election.  Now we are weeks away from another election. Will enough voters turnout to overcome the dirty tricks that the GOP has in its plans? I hope you'll take another look at what I wrote.

--- start 2024 ---

I've been building the Tutor/Mentor library since the 1970s, with books, videos, articles and research that I've found interesting and useful and have archived, to make it available to others.  I started putting this on the Internet in the late 1990s and have added to it regularly since then. 

Below is a map showing the entire library. Click here to view

This now has more than 2000 external links, plus hundreds of articles, visual essays and videos created by myself and interns who have worked for me in the past.  Many of the websites I point to have their own extensive libraries.  

Imagine all of the people who work in these organizations or write these article were connected in a huge information and problem solving web. Twitter had that potential. No longer. Other social media sites have also offered that potential.  I started connecting with others in the 1990s via email list conversations, then Yahoo Groups, then Google+.  

I built my library using this on-going question: "What are all the things we need to know and do to reach all kids in high poverty areas with organized tutor, mentor and learning programs that help them move safely through school and into adult lives, with jobs and careers that enable them to raise their own kids free of poverty?"  

Each node on the concept map has a small box at the bottom that leads to an external web site or another concept map.

One section that I've been building for the past 10-15 years focuses on race, poverty and inequality, which are root causes for why we need extra programs and where they are most needed.  This concept map show sections in this part of the library.

In 2016, after Donald Trump was elected to be President of the United States, I began building a list of articles on a DropBox page, showing the harm he was causing. I've expanded this list over the past eight years to show the forces that have put the rich in power over myself and the masses of ordinary people. 

My most recent addition was a video of the Midnight Kingdom Lecture Series, which is described as "a deep dive into the history of how our world was constructed using white supremist lies, religious mythologies, and poisonous conspiracy theories".  It's based on a book by Jarod Yates Sexton.

Open this link to view Episode 1 of the series.  I've only watched the first two videos so far, but it's already pretty depressing, and a strong reason to vote for Kamala Harris, just to slow the forces working against us.  (That did not work very well, did it?)

That video is only the most recent of a long list of articles I've put on this page. The graphic below shows a few added in mid 2022.

I've continued to add to this list since 2024.

In a July 2024 article I wrote about the Internet as a force for Change.  By that, I meant that the Internet makes all of this information available to everyone with access. It's there, if you're motivated to look.  It does what the printing press began to do about 550 years ago.

In Episode 2 of the Midnight Kingdom lectures Yates shows how those in power try to control media and all forms of learning to shape a world view that supports them staying in power.  He also shows how people who are oppressed find ways to learn about issues and unite to create change.

The frightening thing is that they then become the ones in power, who apply the same tactics to stay in power.  This is a constant, never-ending battle.  

As long as people make an effort to aggregate and archive resources that show what's happening and why, we have a slim chance of blunting the power-grabbing tendencies of those in power and give representation to the rest of us.

Keeping this information available to you is an on-going effort. Since 2011 I've been the only one managing this effort (and paying for it from my own pocket and a small set of donations).

The history I point to extends back to the beginning of civilization when people in power began to use religion to force people to do the will of the people in power.  It will continue into the future.

Beyond my lifetime. Maybe beyond the current version of the Internet.

Thus, I appeal to young people, future thinkers, technologists, etc. to reach out and take ownership of my archives (and those of others) to keep the library updated, and to move it to new platforms as the current ones are shut down.

You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Mastodon, etc.  See links on this page.  Please share my articles so others have access to this information.  Reach out if you want to help.

Finally, I appeal to you to join the small group of donors who make annual contributions to help me pay the bills.  Visit this page. 

Building strong volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs

School has started and volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago and across the country are at different stages of volunteer and student recruitment, orientation, training and matching. 

Ideally, most of the planning that for this year's activities began last spring and continued through the summer. My focus is on helping programs with their planning so they are even better when they start again in the coming year.

I led one volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975 to 1992, then with the help of six other volunteers, started a new program in November 1992, which I led until June 2011.  These were hosted at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters on Chicago Avenue until 1999.  

When I say "volunteer-based" I'm not just talking about the adults who serve as tutors and mentors, but those who do more, helping to organize and operate the program.  

The program I started leading in 1975 was already 9 years old when I became its leader. It had 100 pairs of volunteers and elementary school-age youth participating by the fall of 1975, after starting in 1965 with just a small group of corporate volunteers.

I had started as a volunteer in 1973, then joined the leadership committee in 1974. I took over when the previous leader decided to take off for Europe, saying "Dan should lead, since he talks the most!"  

The graphics below illustrate the growth of the program from 1974 to 1992. 

The committee in 1974-75 had nine members. It was led by Roger Kennedy, a copywriter in the MW Catalog Advertising Department.

By 1976-77 I had increased the committee to 13 people.  I was a retail advertising copywriter. 

By 1987 the program had grown to over 250 pairs of kids and volunteers. 33 volunteers, including students in grades 7 through 12 who were graduates of the program, were offering time and talent to lead the program.  We had a part-time paid staff, of three students from Moody Bible Institute.  My own jobs had grown and I was now a divisional advertising manager. 

In the spring of 1990 I left my corporate job with Montgomery Ward and we converted the program to a non-profit, named Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc.  This enabled me to raise money to pay myself a salary to continue leading the program and to hire others to help.  The 1991-92 volunteer leadership structure reflects the growth of the program to 440 kids and 550 volunteers by June 1992. More than 60 volunteers, including student alumni, were involved in planning and operating the program.  I was the only full-time employee.  We had three part timers helping. 

As we ended every school-year, starting in 1975 I had to recruit new volunteers to take on leadership roles. While this was a year-round process it peaked in April-May.  My year-end speech always included a "help me" message. We spent the first part of every summer teaching new committee members about the work involved in operating the program and then the rest doing the work of starting the next year's program. 

I starting a written annual plan in the late 1970s and rather than starting each new year from scratch, we built on what we'd done before, getting better, adding new elements, discarding what was not working. Here's an example of this annual plan. This is from 1984-85.  

That's one of the secrets of growing a tutor/mentor program from "good to great" over many years. 

I was able to lead a program for so many years because I was constantly learning from how other programs in Chicago were operating.  My primary goal of building a list of all tutor/mentor programs was a) to help draw attention and resources to each; and b) to help each program "see" what others were doing, and to borrow good ideas for their own program.  The idea was to build from "good to great" rather than constantly start from a limited range of ideas.

My departure from the CGTP in October 1992 was painful, and the result of a lack of agreement on how the program should operate and what its future growth would be, between myself and the volunteers who I had recruited to be our Board of Directors in 1990 when we created the non-profit.

It was during this timeframe that 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed in Cabrini-Green.  While Chicago media were "demanding action" I remember driving down the Kennedy Expressway and saying to myself, "I don't need to lead an under-funded, under-supported program with over 900 participants, to share what I've learned to help similar programs grow in all parts of Chicago."

I immediately began to focus on what had divided myself and the other program. First was the decision to expand and serve 7th to 12th grade kids who had graduated from the original program at the end of 6th grade.  Second was to help similar programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago.

We created Cabrini Connections to help kids from the original program go from 7th grade through high school. Starting with 5 teens and 7 volunteers in January 1993 we grew to 80 teens and 100 volunteers by 1998 and due to the limited space we had, we stayed around that number until I left in 2011.  We used our first grant in 1993 to hire two part time staff (veteran volunteers from the original program).  As we raised more money in 1994 I began to draw a salary. We never had more than 3-4 full time staff members and 3-4 part time staff and interns between then and 2011. 

I never earned as much as I was earning during my final years at Wards.  And, since forming the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011, I've drawn no salary.

We spent all of 1993 planning what became the Tutor/Mentor Connection and launched it in January 1994.  In 2011 I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to continue to operate the T/MC in Chicago and help similar intermediaries grow in other cities.

In both versions we drew upon volunteers to help.  

In both cases we applied the "Good to Great" principles that Jim Collins made famous in his book, "Good to Great and the Social Sector".  

I first used the graphic at the right in the late 2000s, then in a 2011 article, which I updated in 2022.  If you have read this far, I urge you to visit the 2022 article and read more about "Good to Great" and what it takes to build constantly improving tutor/mentor programs. 

Then read this article about re-thinking philanthropy.  If we don't change how programs are funded there will be too few great programs and far to few programs of any kind reaching K-12 kids in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places.

This 1994 Chicago Sun-Times article shows how I traded my advertising job at Montgomery Ward to build Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I've shared much of what I learned over those years in the articles on this blog and in the information I share on the www.tutormentorexchange.net site.

However, the details of what I learned and how I did this are in my archives.  I hope that someone who reads this will recognize the potential value of this history and will recruit a university to take ownership, so students can learn from what I've learned and more systematically share it to help "good to great" youth programs grow in more places, reaching more kids. 

You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon and a few other places (see links here).

If you want to help me pay the bills, please visit this page and make a small contribution.  

Mapping the Ecosystem

For more than 50 years I've attempted to connect leaders and supporters of volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in an on-going effort to help constantly-improving programs reach K-12 youth in more high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.  I did this from my role as leader of a single program from 1974 to 1992, then through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I still lead today, through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

My secret. Build a list. Use it to invite people to gather. Use it to share information about individual programs and why they are needed.  

We launched our first formal survey to learn about tutor/mentor programs in Chicago in January 1994. 120 organizations responded. We used that list to organize the first Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in May 1994.  We held additional conferences every six months until May 2015.

I've been trying to map participation, showing "who's attending" and "who's missing" since the late 2000s.  Visit this page and you can find many examples. 

Visit this page and see work done by IVMOOC students at Indiana University to show 1994-2015 Tutor/Mentor Conference participation, using Kumu and other visualization tools. Below is just one view created using the visualization created by one Fall 2025 IVMOOC team.  See it in this article. 

While I've attempted to explain why mapping participation is an important part of network-building, I did not have these resources pre-2015 when I was still hosting conferences, or pre-2011 when I had funding and a small staff to help me do this work.  

Plus, the tools available to map and analyze participation in networks have dramatically improved in the past few years.  Thus, I've been pointing to work done by others to emphasize what I've been trying to do.

Below is a screen shot I from an article I found today on LinkedIn.  This shows the Black Home Initiative Network, which is working to increase Black homeownership in the Washington/Oregon states.  Read their description of why this is important and then open the map and look around. 

9-29-2026 update - here's another visualization created using KUMU, showing the Black Home Initiative Network.  Read the description on LinkedIn and see how "This ecosystem map shows the Black Home Initiative Network, working to increase Black homeownership. Visualizing it is powerful because it lets partners see where the disconnects are, and where transformation could happen."  Click here to view the Kumu map.

Read more articles showing use of Kumu.io. click here

9-18-2026 update - look at the ecosystems maps created by the Clark-Fox Family Foundation in St. Louis.  read LinkedIn article - click here.  Visit website - click here

Open this link to explore the map shown above. 

10-5-2026 update - Support and Services Map for Milwaukee Black and Latino/a Students - created by the BLEST Hub as part of the My Brothers Keeper Initiative. It's vision "is to contribute to improving life outcomes for Black and Latino/a students in the Milwaukee area by strengthening spaces, initiatives, and connections that support our youth during periods of transition from middle school through post-secondary completion and/or fulfilling and stable employment."

 View map at this link. 

View my page on "Mapping Network Growth" and follow the links. 

On this page of the Tutor/Mentor Library I point to many intermediaries working in the youth-service field. I've been connected to some of these, such as America's Promise and MENTOR since the late 1990s.  Yet, I've not found examples of any of these organizations mapping their networks, like you see done in the examples that Kumu.io shares. 

Maybe it's being done. If you have examples, please share the links and point to blog articles that show how they are building an understanding of their ecosystems and how this is helping them to more to help kids.

I no longer have the resources or energy (I will be 80 in December and had a heart attack in August 2026) to do the work I'm describing, yet for comprehensive, on-going, youth tutor, mentor and learning programs to reach K-12 youth in more places, that ecosystem needs to be built, and operating in Chicago and every other urban and rural area of the USA (and the world).

The articles I share can hopefully spur the innovation of many others.  

Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter and/or Mastodon. (see links here).

And, if you value what I'm sharing, visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills. 

One strategy to support them all

This graphic shows a strategy that I've led since late 1992.

I and six other volunteers created a new volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in late 1992 to support teens who had aged out of the 2nd to 6th grade program at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago. We called that Cabrini Connections. The map shows its location on the Near North side of Chicago. 

The map also shows that the area we served was just a small part of the city. We recognized that one more small program would not have much impact on the 200,000+ kids living in high poverty areas of Chicago, so in 1993 we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), to gather and share information and build greater public awareness of EVERY tutor/mentor program in Chicago, not just our own.    I've supported the T/MC via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011.

The T/MC is an "information-based problem solving strategy".   One part is my lists of Chicago area youth serving programs, which I urge people to point to regularly to draw volunteers and donors to each.

The larger part of  the information I share are steps people can take to build and support tutor/mentor programs in more places and information that shows why these programs are needed and where they are most needed.

In this section of the Tutor/Mentor library I point to articles like this, focusing on wealth inequality in America, or this blog, which focuses on breaking the cycle of poverty in America.  Another article describes "How the racial wealth gap has evolved -- and why it persists".   Many articles on this blog focus on these issues. Just open the tabs at the left and scroll through past articles. 

Many of the articles in my library are from 10 to 25 years ago. They demonstrate that the problems we face now are deeply rooted, and still need solutions. 

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on is helping 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.  The graphic at the right shows to teens who were part of the tutor/mentor program I led in the 1990s. One is shown at the lower right. She's now Director of Support Services for Housing Opportunities for Women.  I'm still connected to both of these teens, and many others, nearly 30 years after we first met.

Today another alum boosted one of my post on Facebook, saying "This program helped shape who I am today and I'm forever grateful."

My goal is that more youth from high poverty areas have similar support systems.

I've created a library of concept maps over the past 20 years 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.

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 25 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.

That knowledge base is the web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs that I've been building since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago from 1975 to 1992. 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 we created in 1993.  

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.  With the White House and Federal government now run by an unelected immigrant billionaire and a convicted felon, getting attention on social media for youth development issues is more difficult than ever before, especially when one has no money for advertising (that's me). 

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 helps build and sustain high quality youth supports in all the places where they are most needed. I tried to do this through the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I help in Chicago from 1994 to 2015.  

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.

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.  

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 2026 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as they move through school and into adult lives. Read more.   Read this article about "building public will".

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.

There is a great deal of uncertainty as we move into spring 2027, mostly centered around the November elections.     While the nation still deals with a lingering Covid19 pandemic, bird flu, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc., we now face massive layoffs of government workers and drastic reductions of Federal funding of programs that help keep us safe and help those who need extra help get that help.  These are just a few of the problems that I see as I scroll my social media feeds each day.  

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. From 2009 till now, I created lists on Twitter with accounts of many organizations in the Tutor/Mentor library, but very few of these are using social media to connect with each other, or discuss issues I address in articles like this. I'm now trying to build a similar network on BlueSky and Mastodon. 

If you're interested in learning more I urge you to read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.  The please read these articles about establishing a Tutor/Mentor Connection at one or more universities. 

I invite others to create and share their own versions of my articles, to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-based strategies in your own communities.  I'd love to help you while I'm still able.

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.

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