Read the story then look at the map below.
This may was created using the Interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator which you can use to zoom into the Chatham neighborhood, and learn if there are any volunteer-based, nonschool tutor/mentor programs.I don't see any. I also see a neighborhood of relative prosperity surrounded by a sea of poverty. How could such a community expect to not be influenced by what was happening all around it?
There will be many editorials, speeches, and even marches in the next few days, calling for an end to violence, just as there have been over and over for the past 16 years as we have been building this database and inviting business, faith, meida and political leaders to look at it.
I hope that this time the result is the formation of "business planning teams" who look at the information in the Tutor/Mentor Institute and read the articles that I've posted on this blog for the past five years.
Begin learning ways to build birth to work mentoring programs around this neighborhood, and in this neighborhood, so young people have better opportunities to make different decisions on how they spend their free time.
Next week there will be a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference at Loyola, where the goal is to help people build volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas. I hope some of those who are reading and writing the editorials will attend.
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2 comments:
Are you serious? You stated that; "...I also see a neighborhood of relative prosperity surrounded by a sea of poverty. How could such a community expect to not be influenced by what was happening all around it?"
Yes, when people work hard and attain a sensibility of what law and order is supposed to be, they should not EXPECT TO HAVE THE VIOLENCE AND CRIME COME TO THEIR FRONT LAWN.
Why is your emphasis on the victim, Thomas Wortham IV and his family and neighborhood? Perhap..not perhaps but In ACTUALITY, the real question is why some people who are given and offered a hand up still continue to live and exist in a criminal mindset? Why did the young thug Brian Floyd of the 3700 block of South Wentworth aka Wentworth Gardens Public Housing Project feel the need to be a thief? Why when living in housing supplied by the taxpaying public did that punk have to go out and rob and steal? Where is the morality in his rearing?
Yes, you may be passionate about your tutoring and mentoring. But those living in Chatham have done all they could to not need your services. It would behoove the family of Brian Floyd to do the same! Poverty is an excuse when it comes to crime and criminal behavior!
Arlene,
My goal is to provide information anyone can use. The map shows that the area surrounding Chatham has a lot of poverty, many kids, and not many tutor/mentor programs. It's been that way for a long time, and I've provided this information for a long time.
It's up to the people who live in this area, or who do business in the area, or who are concerned about what happens, to decide what to do with the information.
I send the same message to people who live in affluent suburbs and who can choose to use the same information. They don't necessarily need to build tutor/mentor programs in their own neighborhood, just because they have done so much to make sure their kids have all sorts of learning and recreation resources that are not as available to kids in poor neighborhoods.
However, if they just ignore what's happening in the poor neighborhoods, the problem will some day be on their doorstep, as it is now with Chatham.
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