Bears Star donates $100k to BBBS Chicago

Hope you all enjoyed Christmas Day, in what ever faith you worship. I went to Chinatown in the morning to pick up my wife's Dad and bring him to our home for dinner. I stopped in my office to see if we had any mail from Friday, and found about $8,200 in donations. That brings our total to about $65,000 in December. Our goal is $100k or more.

In today's Chicago Tribune I read how Julius Peppers of the Chicago Bears made a $100,000 donation to support Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago. I think that's great and congratulate BBBS on receiving the donation.

However, I hope that the other members of the Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, etc. will also make similar donation, but not all to the brand name organizations like BBBS, Boys & Girls Clubs, Junior Achievement, etc. If you read the map stories, and sports stories, we've written, there are many programs in different parts of Chicago that are not as visible, but are doing good work and need funding to sustain their efforts.

Our own Cabrini Connections program is led by a former football player at Northwestern who has many friends in pro sports. He has been writing a series of blog articles showing how the tutor/mentor program is like a football team. The players on the field (tutors, students, staff) need to be supported by fans, front office and investors if they are to be as good in the game of tutoring/mentoring as they need to be.

This map shows a vision of athletes adopting different neighborhoods of Chicago, and supporting programs in those neighborhoods with time, and dollars, and as leaders. Thus, in an article such as that written today in the Tribune, the writer could have ended by saying, "and there are more places like BBBS" where donations are needed.

This PDF illustrates a role athletes could take that would not only support their favorite programs, but all the other tutor/mentor programs in a city.

Perhaps sometime in 2011 the media could be writing stories showing how athletes are working as a TEAM to help make constantly improving tutor/mentor programs available to all of the neighborhoods of Chicago where great programs are needed.

We'd like to help make that happen.