It takes a village.....to overcome poverty and reduce violence in Chicago

I've been using a concept map for more than 10 years to visualize all of the different groups of people who need to be involved in helping volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach youth in high poverty neighborhoods, and stay connected for many years as those youth move from elementary school, through high school, and college, and into jobs.

Two University of Michigan grad students did an animated version of this village graphic in the late 2000s, but without a voice-over. Today I was able to record that animation in the video shown below.





Last week I posted an article under the headline of "Lessons learned from leading a tutor/mentor program for 35 years".  In it I included images showing the tutoring program committee in 1975-76 and in 1990-91, to illustrate the long-term work needed to build and sustain that program.

In the video below I talk about my history of involvement and point to the same yearbooks.



I shared the "village" video on Twitter today and one of my followers from Florida wrote "Just listened to your YouTube presentation that you twitted out. How can I make a small, $50, contribution to your organization via your PayPal account. You are doing some excellent work."

I pointed him to this page and he sent me $50. 

If you've been reading my articles and value the information I'm sharing, I hope you'll do the same.