"You helped me" - example of Tutor/Mentor Connection impact

I am part of a youth mentoring list serve hosted by Dr. David DuBois of the University of Illinois at Chicago. This week I responded to a message posted by Graig Meyer of Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate, which is what I often do when someone posts a message and I want to connect and add them to the Tutor/Mentor Connection's network.

This time the response was the following:

I'm so glad you took time to reach out. We've actually corresponded on Facebook before. You helped me think through our approach to how we encourage participation in our program. Your advice had a strong impact on a major program overhaul that we just completed.

I've been aware of your program since I was in grad school at the School of Social Service Administration from 1996-98. In some ways, Cabrini Connections fostered my interest in this work. I'm sure you know about Youth Guidance, which is where I worked during 97-98 and has had a huge impact on my philosophy about programming for youth.

I really like the stuff about maps and community-distribution that you've been doing. I learned about that via Facebook. I just spent some more time exploring your website, and I signed up for T/MC. I'd love to bring my staff to your conference sometime, but that's not likely to happen during this budget year.

Every now and then I get a message like this, from someone telling me how much they have used the information we provide to build their own program. It's what we hope is happening. It's what we hope our own donors value, when we ask them for continued funding.

If you've been using the Cabrini Connections or Tutor/Mentor Connection as a resource, please let me know, by posting your own story, here, or on Facebook, or on our Ning site.