Fighting Poverty. Do the Planning. Do the Team-Building, Too

I used the graphic below in an article I wrote in June, under the headline of "Fighting Poverty. Do the Planning. See map here.

I created the graphic below to illustrate the long-term process of getting from where we are today, to a different reality we might want in the future, such as lower poverty rates, less crime, more kids finishing school prepared for adult roles.

I created this concept map more than 15 years ago to illustrate the process that can lead to more people involved, using better information, making better decisions, leading to the desired result. I used it in this story, along with other places.

There are a growing number of big and small efforts where people are doing strategic planning with a goal of bringing a wide range of organizations together to solve community problems. In many of these a lot of new data is being collected, organized and presented in different formats. This concept map points to some of these data platforms. I point to others on this blog.

If if a few people hosting web libraries can build links to this information, at some point we should move from gathering more data, to thinking of how we gather and educate more people, so we have enough talent and resources involved to begin to solve the problems we're focused on.

In the chart above, the left side focuses on building the library, and keeping it updated. The right side focuses on a variety of ways the information is being learned and used to innovate solutions to problems. Across the top are marketing type activities intended to get a growing number of people involved, and keep them involved.

I'd love to be able to go on different web sites and see process mapped the way I'm showing it. If you're doing something like this, and it's on your web site, please share the link. If you'd like to understand these graphics better, connect with me @tutormentorteam on Twitter, Facebook, or leave a comment below.