Connecting networks - Conference Follow up

This is the first of many photos taken at the May 27 and 28 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference that will be uploaded to our Ning photo gallery in the coming week.

We'll also be posting the pdf presentations of many of the speakers and workshop presenters, such as this one, from Charles Cameron, who is a discussion facilitator on the www.socialedge.org forum.

The first speaker, Professor James Garbarino, Loyola University Chicago, author of "Lost Boys," on Violence and Young Men, provided a framework and focus for the conference.

He said, "it is essential to build a deeper understanding. Good intentions are not enough." And he said "It matters where you live", showing the connection between high poverty and high violence.

Then on Friday morning, Bill Curry, Executive Director, and founder, of Breakthrough Urban Ministries, introduced The Breakthrough Model for Tutoring and Mentoring. I'll post his presentation when I get it, but this video shows the model, and illustrates a vision that the T/MC fully supports.

More than 130 people attended the conference, and presented experience from many different types of tutoring and/or mentoring programs, as well as research on poverty and violence, that we can all learn from. I encourage you to browse the speaker list and visit web sites, and to use the attendee list to make contact and build relationships.

Follow this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Connection newsletter, and connect your ideas and strategies to the T/MC and each other, so we can do more to attract the resources, ideas and talent we need to implement and sustain these strategies for many years.

Finally, if you value what the Tutor/Mentor Connection is trying to do, to connect all of these organizations with a constantly expanding library of ideas, we need your donations and sponsorship to keep doing this work. You can sponsor the conference, or sponsor one of our fund raising events. Or you can just send a small donation.

I hope you'll help us help all of these organizations help thousands of kids living in poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.