Yesterday I was the Keynote Speaker at the 5th annual "Connections Count" summit, held in Lafayette, Indiana, and sponsored by Our Kids Are Our Community.
I was invited to speak by Steven Wilson, a communications professor from Purdue, who is a participant in the Youth Mentoring ListServ hosted by David DuBois, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. Steve sent me some media stories that were generated by students from Purdue. You can read them here, here and here.
My goal was to broaden the thinking about what a youth mentoring program might look like, and about ways the different stakeholders in the community might support them. I pointed "out of the box" to information on our web sites, that any one in the community can use to expand their ideas and build strategies that reach more kids with more comprehensive, and long-term, types of support.
I posted my presentation here.
On April 22 I'll be speaking at a conference at the University of Iowa and on August 21, I'll speak at a conference in Indianapolis. My goal is that people in different places look at the quarterly event strategy and collaboration ideas and realize that if all of us talk about the resources needed to make great programs available to support mentors and mentees, we might get more attention from donors in every community than we're able to get right now.
If we can help other cities develop more effective mentoring program support strategies, my hope is that a few donors will provide the money needed to support those same strategies here in Chicago. If you'd like to help the Tutor/Mentor Connection, you can donate here or email us at tutormentor2@earthlink.net
Or you can become a sponsor or advertiser, and help us by supporting the May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences.
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